Kitty Ussher: My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this point, and we obviously hope that people will be treated with decency in what is a very difficult time not only for Lloyds, but across the financial services sector. The question of the number of people employed by Lloyds is obviously a commercial matter for the company itself, but I am sure that Members in all parts of the House who have constituents who are affected will want to make sure that they are treated as decently as possible.

Kitty Ussher: Well, I am delighted to be able to report to the House that the Chancellor is currently at ECOFIN fighting for this Government's interests, and in particular ensuring that the UK's interests are represented as the European Community discusses the de Larosière report, which is entirely relevant to the City of London as it deals with the European supervisory framework. I think that that is exactly the right thing for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to be doing, and it is in direct contrast to the policies of the Opposition, which are to reduce the influence of our country in Europe by leaving the European People's Party and refusing to engage.

Ian Pearson: We have made a number of announcements with regard to UKFI, and as the hon. Gentleman knows, it operates on an arm's length basis. It is right that Bradford & Bingley and other banks that have received Government funds and involve UKFI in a supervisory management role should act on a commercial basis. We will continue to ensure that we provide the right level of resourcing for UKFI so that it can undertake the work that it needs to do, which is about protecting the taxpayer's interests.
	We have to bear in mind that as a Government, we have invested huge sums on behalf of the taxpayer into our banking system. We need to ensure that we do all we can to protect the taxpayer's interests, and that is what we will do.

Dennis Skinner: Notwithstanding the progress that has been made arising from the G20 and all the rest of it— [ Interruption. ] This is serious— [ Interruption. ] We won every seat in Bolsover last week, six out of six— [ Interruption. ] Not in my area. I was on the streets speaking to voters and getting them out— [ Interruption. ] You are no good at maths, either.
	Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that this time last year there was serious speculation in oil and other commodities, and the price of oil rose to $147 a barrel? Speculation undoubtedly played a significant part in that. The price has now risen to $68 today. Will he ensure that there is no speculation of the kind that we had last year, to ensure that the recovery gathers pace through to next year?

Stephen Timms: An announcement of the timing for the comprehensive spending review has not yet been made, and I am not able to provide additional information on that, but of course there will certainly be one.

Road Signs (Tourist Destinations and Facilities)

Alan Beith: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to impose duties on the Highways Agency and other public authorities to promote tourism by providing or permitting to be provided appropriate road signage; and for connected purposes.
	The Bill is the product of the frustration of people whose businesses depend on tourism at the obstruction that they meet in getting approval for signs to direct motorists to their location in rural areas. They are frustrated particularly with the attitude of the Highways Agency and the planning authorities, which in turn are influenced by guidance from central Government; their frustration is shared by hon. Members. I am grateful to those who so readily agreed to be supporters of the Bill, including my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson), who is here this afternoon and who I know is seeking to deal with the same problem in his constituency.
	Tourism is absolutely vital to most rural communities, and many tourist businesses depend on motorists finding their way off the main road to the wide variety of leisure, educational, catering, retail and accommodation facilities on offer. Many of those facilities depend on passing trade; others might already been known about but are difficult to find without a sign indicating where to turn off the main road.
	I am not in favour of American-style billboards all over our roads and fields, advertising products that are not local, and a rush of such signs along some motorways might have prompted a tougher line being taken. That was understandable, but there is a completely different case to be made for local tourism signs. Signs for local amenities need to be attractively designed, well sited and not confusing or too numerous. It is right that there should be planning controls, so long as they are exercised proportionately and sympathetically. In too many instances, however, we find obstruction and disproportionate action.
	In looking at examples of the problem, I want to distinguish between two types of sign: brown signs and privately provided signs. On trunk roads, the Highways Agency has a system for the familiar brown signs, although it is at best a fairly rigid scheme. High visitor numbers are required to qualify for a sign, for which the tourist attraction pays. On motorways, an attraction needs 250,000 visitors a year to qualify for a sign; on single carriageway roads such as the A1 in Northumberland, the figure goes down to 40,000, with the possibility of an allowance for seasonal businesses. Many tourist attractions try to get through all the hoops and meet the definitions to qualify and pay for a sign, but are still refused.
	I wonder how many can match the experience of Berwick-upon-Tweed golf club at Goswick, south of Berwick. It is a beautiful seaside links course that attracts thousands of visiting golfers and will stage the pre-qualifying competition for the British Open every year for the next three years. It is the first course in the north-east to get that honour. In 2000, it paid £1,200 for brown signs. Recently, however, the Highways Agency removed the signs, without consulting the club or allowing it to make representations.
	I took the matter up with the Highways Agency, which has apologised for its failure to consult. So, that is all right: the signs will go back up, won't they? Oh, no. They cannot go back up, because the Highways Agency says that they are no longer in line with its current policy on tourist signs. It says that the golf club should advise visitors through its website to look out for the road sign to Goswick and follow that route. That involves taking a dangerous turning off a single carriageway road, one of several turnings to places with confusingly similar names: Goswick, Cheswick and Fenwick. The idea that hundreds of visiting golfers should have to rely on their computer back home to spot the right turning is ridiculous. If the Highways Agency wants to prove my Bill unnecessary, it must abandon this ridiculous refusal to reinstate very necessary signs, and show more flexibility and helpfulness to rural businesses.
	Another case involves a newly built country hotel at Doxford Hall, north of Alnwick, which simply needs to be added to an existing brown sign on the Al that refers to other local amenities at Doxford. Hon. Members might have seen a reference to this place, because the owner is planning to sell it and to give the entire proceeds to cancer nursing in the community in north Northumberland—a marvellous gesture. On roads other than trunk roads, local highway authorities are responsible for the signs, and some are helpful. I gather that Northumberland county council has agreed to brown signage for Doxford Hall on the local roads, for example.
	Brown signs are clearly going to be approved for and financed by only the larger tourist businesses. Small country pubs, tea rooms, animal sanctuaries, potteries, bed and breakfasts, farm shops and other smaller-scale amenities usually try to have a smaller sign on the edge of a field or on a fence alongside the road. Some of those signs are needed only during the tourist season. They require planning permission, for which there are fees to be paid, whether the application is successful or not. A couple of years ago, the Department for Communities and Local Government, through central guidance, set off a purge of roadside signs, which hit rural businesses in many parts of the country. Council officials were dispatched to remove signs. One over-zealous official in my constituency actually started painting over offending signs with a spray can.
	I believe that there is a need for a more tolerant attitude, and for a simple approval process to ensure that signs provide direction to nearby tourist facilities and that they are safely sited, from a road safety point of view, proportionate and adequately designed. The absence of such a light-touch system has led to a proliferation of parked vans, farm trailers and other less attractive substitutes for proper signs—although they, too, are now covered by the planning guidance and are at risk of removal.
	In a period of recession, the countryside depends more than ever on visiting tourists contributing to the rural economy. People need to be able to see where the facilities are, and it is better for road safety that the motorist can clearly see where to turn off and find a meal, a bed, a place of interest or a facility for the children. My Bill simply places obligations on the Highways Agency, highway authorities and planning authorities to help the promotion of local tourist facilities by providing appropriate road signs or permitting appropriate signs to be provided. At the moment, small businesses too often feel that the system is working against them when it should be helping them, enabling them to make their services available to the motorist and thereby to support tourism in the economy of the countryside.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Ordered,
	That Sir Alan Beith, Hilary Armstrong, Mr. Nigel Evans, Mr. Adrian Sanders, Mr. David Drew, Mr. Denis Murphy and Dan Rogerson present the Bill.
	Sir Alan Beith accordingly presented the Bill.
	 Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 26 June and to be printed (Bill 107).

Chris Grayling: That is right. There will be times when we debate issues on a party basis, but not because we have different objectives. We all share the objective of reducing crime and knife crime and of restoring stability to communities affected by it. There may be times when we disagree over methods or be critical of Ministers because we think they have got it wrong. That is right and proper, but organisations and individuals out there are looking to this House for a grown-up and mature debate. It is right and proper that with an issue as serious as this one we take a step back from time to time and have a grown-up discussion of the kind that the right hon. Gentleman rightly started in his Home Affairs Committee.
	Before I get to the heart of the debate, I want to make one important point. There is no arms race going on among all children in the United Kingdom, nor are all seven-year-olds carrying knives for their elders. There is an acute gang problem in some parts of the country, particularly in inner-city areas and most significantly in parts of London, but the vast majority of young people are decent, law-abiding citizens, getting on with their lives, taking their exams, working on a Saturday morning and having fun on a Saturday night. We must not allow a serious and important debate to create the sense that young people are a problem today.

Philip Hollobone: I congratulate my hon. Friend on his remarks—he is absolutely right about this antisocial behaviour point. My local police in Kettering have told me that they know who all the teenage troublemakers are and they are becoming increasingly frustrated that they do not really have the powers to deal with the problem effectively. The Home Office is rolling out the fixed penalty notice scheme in six police forces around the country, whereby they will able to issue notices to teenagers below the age of 16. That is not available at the moment in Northamptonshire, but it is a tool that the local police would very much like to have, because they could use it to deal effectively with the ringleaders and troublemakers among teenage groups.

Alan Johnson: I am tempted to blame the Health Secretary for the present state of affairs. May I say how much I appreciate my right hon. Friend's contribution in this area, which, as Home Secretary, I know I will appreciate even more? When I was Secretary of State for Health, we made it clear in the operating framework, which is an important document for the health service and used to be called their marching orders, that it was a tier 3 local priority to exchange information and to engage and co-operate in this way. As a result, double the number of hospitals now provide the information. I accept that we have to go further, but that is an important result, given that we made it an operating framework tier 3 priority only last December. We are on the right track.
	The figures are extremely encouraging. During the action plan's first phase, there were 200,000 stop and searches and 3,500 were seized.

Alan Johnson: I acknowledge the special knowledge—the special constable knowledge, even—of the hon. Gentleman. I shall look at that issue, but, once again, my discussion with the chief constable of Warwickshire this morning suggested what the figures show—that, after eight months, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. These are eighth month statistics: 3,500 knives seized from 200,000 stop and searches. So, we are at least on the right road, but, of course, I shall look at other issues.

Alan Johnson: I do not like to intervene in the conversation about stop and search, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Select Committee was right, however, to raise the concern that a small number of young people are worried about their safety and feel that they need to carry knives to protect themselves. Senior police officers have told us that the fact that fewer stop and searches now uncover a weapon suggests that the number being carried is declining further. But, it is absolutely critical that we get the message across to young people that carrying a knife does not make them safer.
	The advertising campaign, "It Doesn't Have to Happen", has been designed by young people, for young people, with that precise purpose. Aimed at 10 to 16-year-olds, the adverts portray unflinchingly the physical effects of knife wounds and have been viewed more than 13 million times. Of those youngsters surveyed, 73 per cent. said that they were less likely to carry a knife as a result of seeing the advert.
	Through the Be Safe programme, 1 million young people will be able to attend workshops over the next five years on the dangers of knives and other weapons. We cannot be the slightest bit complacent, and one knife crime is one too many, but police forces tell us of encouraging signs that knife carrying is falling among young people, and the statistics on NHS admissions and on crimes committed support that view. Between October and December 2008, there were seven fewer fatal stabbings compared with the same period during the previous year.
	I completely agree with the reference in the Opposition's motion to "cross-community co-operation". Community and voluntary sector organisations have a crucial role to play in tackling knife crime. The motion is right to praise the work of the Damilola Taylor Trust, and I mention in particular Damilola Taylor's father, Richard Taylor, who was appointed by the Prime Minister in February to be his special envoy on youth violence and knife crime.

Keith Vaz: I am most grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way a second time. We in the Select Committee were very keen to ensure that our report was not a knee-jerk reaction to another tragic death; that is why we took six months to complete the report. We have also decided that, at the end of July, we will bring the stakeholders together to consider the report's conclusions thoughtfully. I am very pleased that the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), has agreed to participate in that seminar, and I hope that the Home Secretary will also find the time to come along and give us his views on the issue—as a way of keeping the issue going and retaining the consensus, which is extremely important. Without the stakeholders working together, no single agency can solve the problem of an increase in knife crime.

Alan Johnson: The Minister of State, Home Department, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson), just reminded me about Baroness Neuberger's report on volunteering. Also, I know from my constituency that every year, in volunteers' week, a special push is made to get people who do not normally volunteer—sometimes that is men, but it is other groups in our community, too—to realise the benefits of volunteering. There is more that we can do in that regard.
	The issue of knife crime among young people is serious, and the motion rightly reflects that fact, but the tackling knives action programme is showing encouraging early signs of success. Through tougher action on those who offend and a greater focus on the causes of knife crime, and through excellent leadership and strong partnerships between the police, schools, social services and community groups, properly organised and adequately funded, I believe that we can address an issue that is rightly seen by the public as absolutely critical to the well-being of our society.
	The issue will be one of my major priorities in the coming months. Along with the Secretaries of State for Justice, and for Children, Schools and Families, I will host an event in July, as I have said, to discuss the outcomes and experiences of the first year of the tackling knives action programme, and will consider what further steps need to be taken to keep knives off our streets. I commend the Opposition for tabling the motion, and I commend the amendment to the House.

Christopher Huhne: The hon. Gentleman assumes that if something does not work, it will begin to work if there is twice as much of it. A much more common-sense approach is to assume that, if a short sentence given to a young man leads to a 92 per cent. reoffending rate, it would be better to try alternatives, particularly since short sentences are given for relatively trivial offences. There was one thing that I entirely agreed with in the speech by the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell, which was his point about the need to head young people off—young men in particular—and stop them from getting involved in a life of crime.

Christopher Huhne: I very much agree with the hon. Lady and congratulate her on her excellent sound effects earlier in the debate. I certainly agree that criminalising a generation of young people who have become involved in knife crime, rather than addressing the reason why they become involved—exclusion from school, fear, peer pressure, gang membership, social deprivation and poverty or family breakdown, to name but a few—does the young people of this country a great disservice.
	What we need, in addition to more effective stop and search and the wider implementation of the Cardiff model, is an end to the blanket criminalisation of young people. Of course those convicted of serious and violent crimes need to be dealt with proportionately, but we need to stop young people from turning to crime in the first place and help those who stray into it to get back on the right track. Preventive programmes, such as a youth volunteer force, should be created to give kids something to do and to provide skills for later life. There should be more youth facilities to stop the devil making work for idle hands. There should also be more dedicated youth workers in safer neighbourhood teams and an effort by schools not only to identify kids at risk of being sucked into gangs at a young age, but to contact and enrol their parents in the fight to stop that from happening.
	For those who are beginning to commit low-level offences, acceptable behaviour contracts and positive behaviour orders should be used, which, unlike antisocial behaviour orders and curfews, require offenders to take responsibility for making amends for their actions without criminalising them unnecessarily. Custodial sentences are of course necessary for serious and serial criminals, but they should be the last resort, not the first.
	That is a major point of difference between us and the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell, who talked about the presumption of a custodial sentence for carrying a knife. It is already possible to send someone to jail for four years for carrying a knife, but we cannot punish anyone unless we catch them first. What is needed to tackle knife crime is a lot less posturing about punishments and a lot more catching criminals by using the obvious tools that we have to hand. Labour cannot change its policies and the Conservatives have barely scratched the surface of what needs to be done.

Justine Greening: I am interested in the hon. Gentleman's comment that so little is being done. Presumably he is aware of Operation Blunt 2 in London. In the past year, more than 2 million people have been stopped, 10,000 arrests have been made—a rate of one every 51 minutes—and 25,500 knives have been seized. There has been a 30 per cent. fall in serious stabbings, and 90 per cent. of those caught in possession of a knife have been charged. Is that a good performance?

Christopher Huhne: I began my speech, as I hope the hon. Lady recognises, by citing the fact that there has been a fall in knife crime and that the problem is being tackled. I find it distressing, however, that some of the easiest hits on getting knife crime down are being missed, particularly the application of the Cardiff model. We know that that model has reduced the number of people being admitted to hospital with knife wounds by 40 per cent. in the areas in which it has been applied. That is potentially a very dramatic gain, and we ought to be making it a serious, top-rate public priority to ensure that it happens. I do not get a sense of urgency, either today from the new Home Secretary or from and his Department and its officials; nor is there an acknowledgement that this is an easy hit that could provide real action very quickly.
	We will support the Opposition motion today because its emphasis is right, but we believe that the Liberal Democrats are the only party that is able to take a targeted and effective approach to knife crime that will really work.

Keith Vaz: I will certainly bear that in mind, Mr. Deputy Speaker, although I know that your request was not directed only at me. My speeches can be quite brief on occasions of this kind.
	It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne). He and the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) gave evidence to the Select Committee and they can take credit for the recommendations that we made in respect of knife crime. I also want to reiterate my welcome to the Home Secretary. If every debate on Home Affairs issues is as consensual as this one, they will be extremely boring for the public, who expect them to be extremely robust. We will take this one as an exception, however. I perceive in this debate a willingness on the part of all the political parties to work together to ensure that we rise above party politics to find a long-term solution to the problem of knife crime that is affecting this country.
	The motion tabled by the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell is one that I can gladly vote for. I know that the Government have tabled an amendment to it, but I hope that when the Minister winds up the debate, he will tell us that the Government will not vote against the Conservative motion. It would be good to send a message out to the public that on some issues—not all, by any means—we can be united in our hope to deal with a major problem.
	I also want to place on record my appreciation of the work of the previous Home Secretary. It is in the nature of democratic politics that we do not get to say goodbye before people go, even though the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell tried to say goodbye to my right hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Jacqui Smith) the last time she was here—

Keith Vaz: Indeed.
	In my view, my right hon. Friend was a first-class Home Secretary, certainly as far as the Select Committee was concerned. Whenever we asked her to give evidence to us, she readily did so. She was always available to provide us with information, and I hope that the new Home Secretary will take the same position. I know that the Select Committee is seeking an early meeting with him; we have given him some dates to consider.
	I also want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Coaker), formerly a Minister of State at the Home Office. He has now left the Department and gone to one with which, as a former schoolteacher, he has a kinship. He is the son of policeman, so obviously having the job of policing Minister was good for him, but he has now gone off to be the Minister with responsibility for children and schools. I wish him well. He, too, was very willing to work with the Select Committee.
	I welcome the Minister of State, Home Department, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson) to his new position. I have known him for many years in the House and I wish him well. He has a tough job. He will find the Select Committee being very robust with him. He has just left the Ministry of Justice with the Sonnex case ringing in his ears. As I say, he can expect us to be very strong with him over ensuring that there is a proper joined-up criminal justice system. As someone who has come from the Ministry of Justice, he will understand the need to ensure that it is seamless. I do not blame him for what happened in the Sonnex case, although until last week he was the Minister responsible for probation. We hope that he will keep a close eye on what is happening in the Home Office.
	All Members were right to mention the massive concern among the public and in the media about knife crime. We tend to react to high-profile cases, which is why the Select Committee felt it important to ensure that we did not produce our report too quickly; we wanted to bring together all the stakeholders, including the Opposition parties, the voluntary sector, the Government, the NHS and so forth—so that together, we could try to fashion a number of recommendations that would be readily accepted by all political parties.
	I did not intervene when the Home Secretary was presenting statistics, but I do not absolutely share his rosy view that knife crime has disappeared. There are, of course, trends showing that knife crime has reduced, but the headline figures are still very worrying indeed. Knife homicides increased by 26.9 per cent. between 2005 and 2007, and there were a total of 270 knife murders in 2007-08—the highest since the homicide index was invented in 1977. Knives were used in 6 per cent. of the British crime survey's violent incidents in 2007 and in approximately 138,000 robberies, woundings or assaults.
	Although there was a bit of banter about the hospital statistics, the fact is that the number of patients admitted to hospitals after stab wounds rose by 48 per cent. The total number of admissions to A and E—5,239—may seem relatively small, but the percentage increase causes us a great deal of worry. That is why the Select Committee fully accepted the Liberal Democrat viewpoint when the hon. Member for Eastleigh gave evidence: it is no good Manchester producing those figures and Leicester not producing them; they should be readily available to all the agencies that seek to deal with this important matter. Whether or not that amounts to central control, or central diktat, we need those figures if we are to get a clear picture of what is happening.
	It is, of course, the victims about whom we should be primarily concerned. If any criticism of the Select Committee report could be made—and I make it as its Chairman—it is probably that we did not spend enough time talking to the victims. It is in practical terms difficult to do, because there are so many of them, so we concentrated on those who had entered the public domain and the people who were prepared to come and talk to the Committee about their own personal experiences. It is important to highlight the necessity to provide as much information as possible to the victims during the processes of the criminal justice system. If we do that, we will be much stronger in dealing with the overall causes of knife crime.
	What are the causes? I know that the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell was not overly taken by our description of an "arms race". He pointed out that the vast majority of young people do not go around carrying knives; only a small proportion carry them, but the damage they do is so profound. The Select Committee used the term "arms race" because we thought it an appropriate description of why young people decided to carry knives. A survey conducted by the OCJS—Offending, Crime and Justice Survey—showed that 85 per cent. of knife carriers in 2006 said that they carried their knives for protection. In other words, the only reason why they were carrying knives was that they felt that someone else was doing so, so they must protect themselves.
	That means that there is a real problem with those who are supposed to protect young people: parents, the state—through the police—community services and, indeed, schools. We concluded that those four agencies were primarily responsible for ensuring that young people were protected, and that their failure, either individually or collectively, had led to an increase in the level of knife carrying. Someone who carries a knife and is in a situation of violence is likely to use that knife; that, in my view, is the reason for the problem of knife crime.

Justine Greening: Is not another, perhaps longer-term, problem the fact that such people are growing up with the sense that they are on their own and must fend for themselves in society? The first time they need practical help from others in the community—people in authority, people who may be older than they are—they often find that it is not there, which conveys a very bad message to them. They tell themselves, "If I'm going to take care of myself, I'll have to do it myself."

Keith Vaz: The hon. Lady is absolutely right about the problems that young people encounter when they are on their own and feel isolated. They feel that they have to carry knives because that is the only way in which they can protect themselves.
	Let us think about those four agencies. Parents must ask their children where they are going and what they are doing. I think it was the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies), a member of the Select Committee, who raised the issue of parental responsibility. Parents do have that responsibility. My children are aged 14 and 12. I ask them—not as often as I should—where they are and what they are doing, and I ask them to keep in touch with me if they are going out with friends. That is something that all parents need to do.
	As our report states, the Committee found that the majority of knives carried by young people—34 per cent.—were kitchen knives from the family home. We do not expect parents to go around counting the kitchen knives every time their kids go out, but an awareness that the knives may well come from the home should be enough to get them thinking. The report also contains a paragraph on the importance of parents' awareness of what video games their children are watching. I know that I have raised this issue in the House on a number of occasions. We feared that violent DVDs and video games contributed to the problem to some extent, because those who were predisposed to violence would be affected by very violent video games.
	As for the police and other agencies, we believed that the initiatives on which the Government had embarked were important. As we have heard from both the present and the previous Home Secretary, a huge amount of money is involved. We did not feel that the "tackling knife crime" initiative had been around for long enough for us to say definitively whether it had been a success, and I welcome what the Home Secretary has said about the need for a review after a year. I am glad that he is getting all the stakeholders together. We would like to be very much a part of that—or we would like the Home Secretary to be very much a part of what the Select Committee is proposing to do. However, we consider it important for the various initiatives not to be duplicated in areas. We feel that they should follow each other carefully and not be taken in isolation, because otherwise the problem will arise of spending money without knowing precisely what it is being spent on.
	Let me now say something about schools. I am glad that we have been joined by the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell). I believe it was his idea that one of his constituents, Mrs. Ann Oakes-Odger, should give evidence to the Select Committee. She produced some very interesting evidence about work that she had done with Essex police. A short film was made by another organisation, the UNCUT project in Leeds. These are examples of local good practice that should be followed in other parts of the country. We felt that there needed to be early intervention. This has to be done at primary school level; it is too late by the time children go to secondary school. That is why we felt that all year 7 schoolchildren should be asked to participate in an assembly or lesson dealing with the issue of knife crime.
	We received some very impressive evidence of what the police are doing, especially in Scotland. We have to give young people alternatives to violence, and some of the schemes we heard about led to a reduction in knife crime. We were particularly taken by a scheme in Glasgow. As well as being the agency that tries to discover whether young people are carrying knives, the police are the best agency to prevent knife crime. We shall want to return to this issue, because the prevention of knife crime is the most important aspect of any discussion of the wider subject.

Keith Vaz: We certainly will return to this subject. We received evidence from young people—some as young as seven—who were a part of gangs and who said they were being used as "caddies" to carry knives for older children. The nature of gang culture makes it possible that knife crime will increase even further.

Martin Salter: It has been a pleasure to serve, with colleagues from both sides of the House, on the Select Committee. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, as we recognised in our deliberations, there is a danger of demonising all gangs, and that gangs per se do not lead to an increase in knife crime? Instead, what happens is entirely dependent on the activities of the gang, and on whether the carrying of a knife has become almost a fashion icon, before moving on to become something much more insidious and dangerous?

Keith Vaz: My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I pay tribute to him because the Committee was initially keen to produce a quick study and report on knife crime following a recent spate of knife attacks in London, but he said that the report needed to be much longer and more in-depth, and should examine a wide variety of issues.
	What my hon. Friend says about gang-related violence is right. We are not here to demonise gangs. I am sure that the scouts would not want to regard themselves as a gang. You may well have been a scout, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was not one, but I know that the hon. Member for Colchester was. The scouts gave evidence to the Committee, telling us that it is important to provide purposeful activities for young men—and, in the context of the Girl Guides, for young girls—to undertake.
	In conclusion, the top few things that I would like the Government to do—the new Minister may announce all this at the Dispatch Box in his reply; who knows?—are as follows: ensure better data sharing about knife violence at a local level; implement the Select Committee's domestic violence recommendations from 2008; ban violent video games and DVDs in young offender institutions; and provide early intervention. Those are just four of the points that the Committee made in its detailed report.
	I would also like better activities to be provided for young people to ensure that they are engaged in constructive, rather than destructive, activities. The Committee looks forward to the Government's response; we know that we published our report only last week, but I am sure that the Minister will respond within the due time. We will continue this conversation with the Government and we want to continue it with the Opposition too, because only by working together can we have a set of policies to which all stakeholders will be able to sign up. Let us keep the party politics out of this and ensure that the House of Commons is united in dealing with this terrible form of crime.

Justine Greening: I shall be brief, as I know that many other Members want to speak. I am a south-west London MP, and knife crime is an issue that we have felt acutely on our side of the river. Many of us recognise that the problem has been building up for years. Since 2005 it has become more prominent in the press, but that reflects the tip of an iceberg of general youth-on-youth crime. That is the aspect that I shall speak about. It has a much broader impact than we see in the newspapers, where only the unfortunate fatal cases are reported.
	A couple of trends have led over recent years to the current situation. First, there is technology. Crime has moved out of the home and on to the street in the past 10 years, so there is now less and less point in breaking into somebody's house to try to lug their plasma TV down the road unnoticed when they have a burglar alarm and all sorts of protection for their property; it is far more effective to steal somebody's iPod, expensive mobile phone or all the portable kit and possessions that people have on them in the street. The people with those possessions are far more likely to be young, and now they end up on the front line of crime in a way that they simply did not 10 or 20 years ago.
	Secondly, there is the rise of gangs and the longer-term, associated issues of family breakdown and housing overcrowding, which mean that our young people are out on the streets socialising with one another, when, 10 or 20 years ago, they might have returned to their homes and been up in a bedroom on their own or with a smaller group of friends. We see children socialising in larger groups more now than we ever did. Often, their parents are working, so they are not around to provide as much supervision as I am sure many of them would want to.
	We have heard the underlying statistics that go beyond the fatal knife crime statistics that we read about in the papers and hear about in our constituencies from our constituents. The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) set out the statistics on A and E admissions for knife wounds, serious knife wounds and emergencies, and they are staggering. There was a large jump in 2005-06 and the numbers rose in the intervening couple of years, but they have now reached a plateau. Clearly, we are now dealing with an ongoing knife crime problem that will be very stubborn and difficult to reduce in the long term. Nevertheless, we need to do so. I take the point that the hon. Gentleman and other Members made about how we need better to understand and share data about knife possession—whether on knife wounds, from people who turn up at A and E or in schools and in youth provision, when different community stakeholders pick up information about the possession and prevalence of knives among our young people.
	I challenge the Minister to refer in his response to the British Crime Survey, which still does not talk to people under 16-years-old. We have seen the rise in the number of younger victims of crime in Britain over the past few years, and the problem goes back to the fact that street crime is focused on young people so much more than it used to be.
	I want to talk about a way through, however. A huge amount of work is going on not just in London but throughout Britain, and there are huge opportunities for young people, meaning that they do not necessarily have to go down the route of crime. It is worth saying that, overwhelmingly, most young people will not get involved in crime but will contribute huge amounts to their communities. On Friday night, I was at the Putney division of the Wandsworth sea cadets, who were having a great time and learning brilliant life skills. I can point to another project in my constituency, the Regenerate project on the Alton estate, which directly tackles youngsters who are more likely to get into crime and knife crime. That is an entirely different project, dealing with different youngsters, but again it is doing fantastic work.
	There is a way through the problem, and it involves us all working together. We must agree that, in the short term, initiatives such as Operation Blunt Two in London, are absolutely critical to addressing today's problem. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) talked about the fact that, in the medium term, we need to understand the individual issues that lead people down such paths. In my view, the problem is not just caused by learning difficulties, although that is a big part; much of the problem is caused by aspiration and what young people in some parts of our communities see as success and the route to success. For too many, success in the area where they grow up means climbing the gang hierarchy and being seen to make progress on that route, rather than going into business or being successful in different walks of life. We must ensure that, for our children, wherever they grow up, there are many more visible pathways to success and its acknowledgment.
	If there is one idea that we should consider as a community, not just in my constituency, but throughout London and throughout Britain, it is the idea of more volunteering by men. They can be role models for the younger male adults growing up in our communities. Perversely, 80 per cent. of volunteers in Britain are women, but never has there been more need for more men to come forward—whether for the Scouts or for charities such as Regenerate in Roehampton. Male volunteers can give young men, in particular, the benefit of their experience and a sense that one can achieve many more positive outcomes in life by contributing positively in our society and as part of our community than one can by simply climbing the gang hierarchy and leading a parallel life to that which so many other people lead. If we as a House work together and continue to debate these issues constructively, we will achieve something that will be extremely valuable not just to our children growing up today, but, I hope, to their children in the future.

Diane Abbott: I am very glad to be able to take part in this important debate, and I congratulate the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), on the excellent report that he has helped to bring to gestation. I am sure that it will fashion and inform our debate for a long time to come.
	It is important in such a debate first to stress that the majority of our young people are not caught up in knife crime, gun crime or gang culture. It is easy to get carried away and criminalise young people as a class, inner-city young people as a class and, even, young people of a certain skin shade as a class. I might shock the House to say that one might walk through Hackney and see a group of gangling boys lurking under their hoods and think that they are plotting murder and mayhem, but they might just as well be on their way to play basketball. They will be quite pleased that people are frightened of them, but they will be trotting behind their mother to church on a Sunday. The media encourage us to jump to conclusions about young people, but we should not, so I want to put on record that, although we have our issues in Hackney, the majority of our young people are not in that criminal sub-culture.
	I do not know of many young inner-city men who when shopping up the west end have not been descended on by store detectives, or who have not walked down a street and had women clutch their bags closer to their bodies because they have just assumed that such men are criminals. We have to beware of criminalising our young people in that way. None the less, as a Member for an inner-city area and as a parent, I know that knife crime and the related issues of guns and gangs are very frightening to parents and communities, not least because one can say goodbye to one's child as they go off in the morning to school, college or their first job, and by the evening receive a phone call saying that they have been caught up in an incident—sometimes quite innocently. That is a frightening thing for parents in an inner-city area to live with, because when the gun, gang and knife cultures erupt, they often touch and harm young people who are simply going about their business.
	I want to talk about the long-term issues of knife crime, the medium-term things that we as the Government and society can do, and the short-term response that we need from the criminal justice system. Where does the young man, swaggering around an estate with a knife up his sleeve, thinking that he can demand respect with the point of a blade or a gun, come from? I do not believe that he is the result of listening to music or watching video games. I do not believe that the culture produces criminal behaviour; I believe that the criminal sub-culture produces the music and the games.
	Where do such young men come from? They come from families, many thousands of them on estates that I represent in Hackney, where young boys are growing up not just in female-headed households—I would be the last person to say that a single parent cannot be a good parent—but in households where they have never seen men getting up and going out to work, and meeting their responsibilities as men; nor have their friends seen that. When they go to school, most of their teachers are women. As they grow up, their notion of manhood is a vacuum. I was fortunate; my family are working-class Jamaicans, but every day that God sent, my father went out to work, and on a Friday he brought home his wage packet. That was my notion, and my brother's notion, of what being a man was all about.
	There are too many young children on estates in Hackney who do not have a notion of manhood. They do not see people—men or women—going out to work and meeting their responsibilities. As they grow up, their minds are filled with a notion of manhood that is informed partly by popular culture, yes, but partly also by the guys they see on the street with the big cars and the gold chains. They do not know that those guys will have a very short "working" life. They do not know about the downside. All that they see is the swagger, the big car, the gold chains, and the notion that that guy is the one whom all the girls are after. Into those boys' imagination comes a notion of manhood that I do not recognise, that people in the House do not recognise, and that my father would not have recognised. That is the notion of manhood to which those boys aspire.

Diane Abbott: That is right. The notion of role models is often misused. It is not a question of pulling in people from outside a community and saying, "Look, you can be him." Young people should be able to see people who are recognisably like them, and recognisably part of their lives—people who are leading the sort of lives that, a few generations ago, inner-city communities took for granted.
	As I say, the process starts in the home. When the children whom I am talking about go to school, increasingly teachers are finding that some of them have not been spoken to. That is a curious thing. When I was growing up in the working-class West Indian community, the one thing that a person could never complain about is people not talking to them; people talked to us the whole time. However, in some of the communities that I am talking about the mothers are watching television or listening to their iPods. When such children attend school for the first time, valuable time is lost just socialising them—teaching them how to use a knife and fork, and how to work co-operatively. That is at the heart of some of the educational failure that we see further down the line.
	I believe that the long-term origins of the social dislocation that leads to gangs, guns and knives is in the home. That dislocation starts with young women who, although they may love their children, do not know how to parent them. Their idea of parenting them is having them dressed up in designer clothes from top to toe. When my son was at primary school, he was constantly complaining that the other little children had a lot of expensive designer stuff. Their mothers were on benefit; I was a Member of Parliament. He could not understand why he could not be in designer clothes, but that was the limit of those girls' notion of parenthood.
	In the summer holidays, when I took my bus pass—I am not a driver—and took my son to reading schemes in the library, or youth projects in museums, or whatever a person could take a little child to on a bus, I would often find that I was the only ethnic minority parent there. It is not that other minority parents in Hackney do not care for their children, but their notions of being a parent are limited. They perhaps come from cultures where the child would have been brought up collectively by aunties and grannies. Instead, they are isolated on some estate, and the aunties and grannies are not within reach. The parents are thrown back on to their own knowledge, which is limited.
	I take the view, I am afraid, that my Government's emphasis on putting single-parent mothers out to work is wrong. Some of those single-parent mothers need first to be taught to be decent parents. Once they have been taught to be decent parents who are at home when their children come home from school, it will be time to talk about sending them out to work to stack shelves.
	I have set out some of the issues relating to home life that I believe form some of the rootless, valueless young men who grow up to be involved in gangs and knives. The answer to those problems is long-term; there is no question about that. We have to look at our policies on work, and look at how we support parents. We have to look at how we work with the Churches. I admit that I am not a regular church-goer myself, but often the only bastion of order, values and boundaries in inner-city areas is the Church.
	I have set out the sort of home life that some of the young men in question have. Having said that, I can show hon. Members families in Hackney in which one young man will tread the straight and narrow and be a credit to his family, and another will be in gangs. For three years I have run an awards programme for top-achieving black children in London. I remember that in the first year we gave an award to a young boy from Somalia who had been brought up on the Chalk Hill estate, one of the toughest estates in Brent. He had been to state schools, but on leaving state school he was able to go to the university of London's School of Oriental and African Studies and graduated with a first. His brother was a gang member. Having said what I said about home conditions, individuals are individuals, and we should always account for that. I have mentioned family dislocation. We are talking about cultures where, generations ago, children had been brought up by an extended family network, but people now find themselves isolated on estates without that support.
	I want to move on to some of the medium-term issues, and I want particularly to focus on education. I was struck by something that a past director general of the Prison Service said: on the day that we permanently exclude a boy from school, we might as well give him a date and time to turn up in prison. I am not saying that educational failure is an excuse for criminality. I am saying that the statistics show a clear link between educational failure and exclusion on the one hand, and criminality on the other. It stands to reason that a boy who is in class studying for his AS-levels is not wandering up and down estates in Hackney doing what he should not be doing.
	I have paid a lot of attention and spent a lot of time on issues of educational failure, and I believe that we have to focus on particular communities in a laser-like way. The danger with some of our education programmes in the inner city is that it is children from the more motivated families—often quite middle-class families—who get on the "gifted and talented" schemes. Quite gifted, intelligent, talented boys get pulled in another direction. Let us remember, some of the boys in gangs may do dreadful things, but they have tremendous qualities of leadership and tremendous skills, and often have tremendous ability. The problem is that we are not intervening early enough to direct that energy and charisma and those leadership skills in the right direction.
	For more than a decade I have organised a conference on education; it is called "London Schools and the Black Child". Every year, I get 1,500 black parents and teachers to talk about the issues facing our children. Hon. Members should never believe that inner-city parents are not concerned about their children; they are concerned. There is more that we can do to tap that concern and encourage them to understand that the school system is on their side.
	As I have said, I also run an award scheme, and the House would be amazed to see the children from some of the toughest estates in London—black children from state schools—who get 10 As at GCSE, and four As at A-level, and who study medicine and go to Russell group universities. As I said right at the beginning of my contribution, knife crime and gangs are a terrible problem, but we should never forget how many of our young people—young black and Asian people—even in the inner cities achieve extraordinary things in the face of adverse circumstances.
	I believe that education is key, but this is a home affairs debate. However, I could say more about the need for a teaching work force in London who look like London; the need to recruit more black teachers; the need for more male teachers at primary school level; and the need to target different groups quite specifically, which I mentioned. It is no good talking about ethnic minority children. The needs and the results of a Chinese child who lives above a takeaway, a third-generation West Indian child, a first-generation African child, and a middle-class east African child are very different. Those children perform very differently academically, so I believe in targeted intervention and education.
	Finally, I want to talk about the criminal justice response to issues of knife crime. Some Members have mentioned the importance of longer sentences, but what deters the young people involved is the certainty of being caught. The focus on sentencing is a problem as we try to fight against the gangs, guns and knives. It makes the public feel good—"Put them inside and throw away the key. Give them 10 or 20 years." However, the point is not the length of the sentence, but the certainty of being caught.

Diane Abbott: I agree entirely with that intervention.
	I shall draw my remarks to a close. The inter-agency working under Operation Blunt, and its capacity to intervene early, has been important. The use of knife arches and other such measures is also important. Knife crime may involve only a minority of our children, but it strikes fear into the hearts of communities and parents. Education is significant. There is a fallacy that carrying a knife makes someone safer; in fact, it puts them more at risk. We do not need only to educate young people; too many parents allow their children to take knives from home to "defend themselves". The answers are multi-agency working and more education—and, where necessary, measures such as knife arches and targeted stop and search. Those measures are important.
	It is wrong to stigmatise a whole class, generation and cohort of young people. However, knife crime is a serious issue and we have to consider the short-term criminal justice measures. It is important for us to do more to protect witnesses and to make it easier for them to be anonymous if they need to be. Recently, I had a meeting with the Secretary of State for Justice about possible changes to the court process to make it easier to ensure that when gang members are caught, they go down. There is no more important disincentive to a gang member than the notion that they will actually go down; the issue is not about the length of the sentence. Criminal justice measures can be taken.
	We have had successes as a Government, but knife crime is emblematic of what has gone wrong for a generation of our young people. I do not want to sensationalise the issue, as some of our media do, but nor do I want to underplay it. The Government have done good work, but there is more to be done—particularly, as I have said, in considering the long-term social context of the problem.

Stephen Crabb: I am grateful for the opportunity to participate for a few short minutes in this extremely important debate. I commend not only my colleagues on the Front Bench for pressing for it, but all Members who have participated for the tone in which it has been conducted. We have had an extremely useful and constructive discussion about an extremely important issue.
	Several Members have already commented on the consensual tone of the debate so far, but the public expect nothing less from us—they are crying out for action on and solutions to this extremely difficult problem. They are sickened and appalled every time they read in the newspapers or see on television reports of the murder of another teenager on the streets of London or of other cities and towns across the UK. That is why they take to the streets and march for action, as we saw last June in London. In September there were more marches in London and in Gourock, near Glasgow in Strathclyde. Members of the public have taken to the streets to campaign on the issue and say that enough is enough. They do not want to live in communities blighted by fear or scarred by street violence. They want to see us in Parliament taking action that will prove effective in the long term.
	I should like to make a few brief points. The first relates to the nationwide nature of the problem. Yes, it is true that knife crime is overwhelmingly concentrated in certain urban centres, but the problem is also experienced in many communities that have not traditionally had such crime on their streets. I am thinking particularly of my own community in Pembrokeshire, in rural west Wales. In November 2006, a fine young man—an excellent soldier from the local 14th Signal Regiment—was stabbed to death outside a nightclub in Haverfordwest, in the heart of Pembrokeshire. The community was truly shocked because people have not been used to seeing such crime. It is true that it was a one-off which has not been repeated, but it created enormous shock in the community.
	Such an incident encourages a ratchet effect. I do not like the phrase "arms race", which has been mentioned this afternoon, but when young people are seen to start carrying and using knives, fear is created in the community and other young people feel that they have to arm themselves as well if they are to be able to respond to any threats. When knife crime starts to spread out from urban centres and hits communities such as mine in rural west Wales, there is a risk that other young people will be encouraged to become involved.
	My second point relates to young women. Yes, the typical carrier of a knife is a young male aged between 15 and 19 living in an urban area, but an increasing number of young women are using and carrying knives and being drawn into gang culture. I saw that for myself when, three years ago, I visited Eastwood Park women's prison with the Welsh Affairs Committee. There I met a young woman who was serving a sentence for taking someone's life by using a knife. The knife crime problem overwhelmingly involves young males, but we should not allow the stereotype to prevent us from looking at all aspects of the problem and recognising that young women are drawn in as well. Such young women have often been victims of horrendous abuse in their earlier lives, and when they get sucked into gang culture they find themselves becoming victims of abuse again.
	My third point is about statistics, which have been discussed this afternoon. The Home Affairs Committee report recognises that we still lack data robust enough to enable us to understand the true scale of knife-related crime. There is a paucity of good data about the activity of gangs around the country. If we are to have effective, local solutions, we need better data to be collected by the police, other agencies and third sector organisations that work at the coal face.
	Finally, I should like to draw to the attention of my party's Front Benchers and the Minister a report entitled "Dying to belong", which was published recently by the Centre for Social Justice. It is the best survey of the problems of gang crime that I have come across. It was produced by a Centre for Social Justice working group, chaired by Simon Antrobus, chief executive of Clubs for Young People. The working group comprised people from Nacro, academics studying the problem and people working at the coal face. The quality of the group's research on the nature of gang-related crime and possible effective solutions is very high, and I commend the report—along with the Home Affairs Committee report—to the House.

David Davies: I recognise that. I am also aware that black boys from Barbados seem to do much better than those from Jamaica. It is a complicated issue. That makes me wonder whether the question of family structures and strong family values is not more important. My wife is the daughter of an east European farm labourer. She was brought up on an estate of grim tower blocks in southern Hungary—her parents still live on it—but walking around there one sees no problems whatsoever. In that part of the world there are strong family structures and a strong sense of community and homogeneity, so there are not problems of the sort that we see in some parts of inner-city London. I am struggling to find the answers, but I do not think that the problem is one of poverty: the lack of social cohesion is part of it, as is the lack of family structures.
	We have heard about role models. Why is it that all too often, black youth growing up have as a role model somebody they have seen on MTV driving around in a fast expensive car? What happened to the black role models who run churches and youth groups? Why are they not looking up to people like that?
	These are important questions, and they will not be answered today; it will take many decades to sort them out. However, there are things that we could be doing, and the Home Affairs Committee report has drawn attention to a few of them. We heard earlier from Liberal Democrat Members that one of the greatest disincentives to carrying a knife is the fear of being caught. That makes me wonder why they, more than anyone else, have opposed measures to allow the police to stop and search young people in areas where there is a particular problem.
	The Government—for all that I criticise them, quite rightly on many occasions—have been trying their utmost to tackle this problem. They have been moving in the right direction, but there is more that they could do. For example, it is ludicrous that if the police stop somebody for carrying out a minor offence that will not lead to an arrest, and they discover, or already know, that that person has recent convictions or a propensity to carry knives, they cannot immediately carry out a simple stop-and-search because they must have the evidence that the person has a knife on them at that moment, which they will not have unless someone has seen it, or can see the handle sticking out of the person's pocket. That situation is ludicrous, and I hope that the Government will think about changing it. However, they have made it easier to bring in section 60 orders, which allow stop-and-search to be carried out.
	It was suggested earlier that a young person who is excluded from school might as well be told when they can turn up to prison. I do not accept that. There are good projects taking place in the inner cities: for example, the London boxing academy in Haringey, which young people who have been excluded from school are strongly encouraged to join. When they are in that placement, they get a couple of hours of sport every day, as well as learning. They are taught by qualified teachers and have mentors who are former boxers and can therefore maintain a sense of discipline that might be lacking in other places. The pilot project has been successful; we could do with many more such projects in inner cities to reach people before they get as far as prison or a young offenders institution.
	I agree with most hon. Members that short sentences are a waste of time. They carry no incentive to behave and, as others have pointed out, little is done with people who go to prison or a young offenders institution for a short time. A Faustian pact seems to be made, whereby the prison officers allow offenders to have a relatively comfortable time, provided that the offenders give the officers no trouble. That is simply not good enough. We must get people into a routine in which they get exercise, education—basic literacy and numeracy—and basic vocational skills. That cannot be done in a short time—it takes at least one or two years. Instead of saying, "Let's not put people in prison if it's going to be for a short time; let's give them community sentences instead," we should say, "We've got people here who have transgressed, and who will go on transgressing. Put them in prison, by all means—but not into a prison that's just a Victorian cage with an iron door and bars on the windows." They should not be left in such places, but, once the punishment element of their sentence has been served—if the offence is minor, perhaps that element is not needed—they should be put into a college surrounded by walls. Rather than roaming the streets, they should be forced to learn and get the basic numeracy and literacy skills that they need, and we should tell them that they will not be allowed out until they have got those skills, but that they can come out much earlier if they do acquire them.

Keith Vaz: I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for his work on the report. He is picking up a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) made. Prison does not always work—the Minister of State, Home Department, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson) is, of course, a former prisons Minister—and we must consider alternatives because the reoffending rate is so high. The hon. Gentleman is basically saying, "Incarcerate"—that is, punish—"but make sure that people use their time productively so that they don't come out and reoffend."

Christopher Huhne: I was tempted to intervene earlier, when the hon. Gentleman traduced Liberal Democrat policy on stop-and-search. However, it is obvious that community sentencing will not be effective unless it is properly supervised, and we need a probation service that does that. Surely that is a more sensible way of spending taxpayers' money than short-term custodial sentences. There seems to be general agreement between hon. Members of all parties that they are ineffective, lead to high reoffending rates and can be counter-productive if those serving them learn skills that we do not want them to have.

James Brokenshire: I welcome the Home Secretary to his new position—I am sorry that he is not here to hear that—and the consensual approach that he took to the Opposition motion by tabling an addendum to it rather than trying to amend it or strike it out. That emphasises the need to come together to look for common solutions to a problem that affects so many of our communities throughout the country.
	I also welcome the new Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson), to his post. He and I have debated similar issues previously, albeit in the TV or radio studios. I therefore look forward to robust and detailed debate across the Dispatch Box so that we can ascertain where there is common ground and where there is difference between us.
	I also send my best wishes to the hon. Member for Gedling (Mr. Coaker). I will miss our exchanges. Despite our differences, he always showed passion and genuine personal commitment to the important matters that we are considering. I wish him well in his new post in the Department for Children, Schools and Families.
	The scourge of knife crime has touched too many families and communities across the country. In 2007-08, some 270 people were stabbed to death with a sharp or pointed instrument. As we have heard, that is the highest total since records on homicide started to be collected in 1977. It is important to note that the proportion of homicides in which a knife is used has risen to more than a third of all homicides. The Home Affairs Committee's report made that point.
	Sir Igor Judge, the president of the High Court Queen's bench, made a clear and powerful statement on the current disturbing situation last year when he noted:
	"Offences of this kind have recently escalated. They are reaching epidemic proportions. Every knife or weapon carried on the street represents a danger and, therefore, in the public interest, this crime must be confronted and stopped."
	The costs are not simply social and personal. The youth organisation, Kids Count, estimates that knife crime costs the state approximately £1.25 billion a year. I commend Kids Count for its work in giving young people a voice and for its awards, which recognise inspiration, good practice and good organisations that do tremendous work at the coal face.
	When one talks to people who have been directly affected by the appalling incidents, one is humbled by the strength of character and resolve of so many of those who have lost loved ones. Their determination to ensure that some good should come out of the appalling tragedies that they have suffered and that long-term change should be achieved to prevent more lives from being cut short is powerful. We all have a duty in this House to make good on those families' expectations, for the benefit of society as a whole and the next generation in particular.
	This has been a well-informed, wide-ranging and interesting debate. The tone of this debate and the manner in which it has been conducted reflects well on this House, which has come in for a lot of criticism for the way in which we debate such issues. However, today's debate highlights the House at its best. Now that he is in his place again, I commend the Home Secretary for his initial comments and for the constructive way in which he has sought to engage with the debate and set out some of his initial thoughts on how he will approach the issues.
	It will be interesting for Conservative Members to see how the Home Secretary's thoughts develop and, in particular, how he intends to take forward programmes such as the youth crime action plan. How will it be delivered and what responsibilities will it be given? At the moment, various different agencies, organisations and Departments are involved in the project, but if it is to have an effect, its implementation will need to be pushed hard. We will look closely at how that works, how developments such as the safer schools partnerships, which we think are valuable and important ideas, are pursued and how the Home Secretary deals with some of the points that have rightly been raised about the sharing of data and information to ensure that more informed, effective and targeted approaches are taken to deal with the offences being committed.
	I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) and his Committee for producing an extremely good report, which provides a framework for this afternoon's deliberations. He raised a number of extremely important points about the need for long-term solutions. Some short-term wins may have been highlighted—the use of stop and search, Operation Blunt 2 here in London and the work of the Mayor of London—but I am under no illusions. The problem appears to be persistent, and, although some short-term benefits may come from the enforcement strategy, we should not kid ourselves that the job is done. So many entrenched social issues lie behind the problem that we need strategies that deliver in the short, medium and long term. The Home Affairs Committee report does justice to that need—that aspiration, that requirement—if we are to achieve what our communities and our society need us to achieve in dealing with this intractable and difficult problem.

James Brokenshire: The right hon. Gentleman is right that we need an informed debate. He will remember the debate on knife crime in this Chamber 12 months ago, in which we both took part. He said then that he felt that the debate was consensual, that there was common ground and that there were issues on which we had agreement across the House. We need to focus on those areas where we can seek agreement. At the same time, however, there will be differences. We will not shrink from being critical or from highlighting failures or those areas where the approaches taken are not effective. It will be important to have a constructive dialogue and debate about such matters.
	The right hon. Gentleman raised in his report the important point about how we need an informed and considered approach to the issues and about how, sadly, the knives out on the streets largely come from the kitchen. The previous focus was on knife amnesties—he will remember the almost annual pictures of the knives handed in to police stations—but they had the wrong emphasis, because the knives largely came from the kitchen drawer, as his report rightly highlighted. Indeed, that was also the feedback that we received from the police.
	We also need to focus on some of the implications of violent video games and DVDs and the factors that might lead somebody down the path of committing violent crime. That will become more challenging. One issue that I am focused on is the move from traditional media to the internet and what that may mean for the ability to regulate and give parents the right signposting about the material and information being used. That issue will become more complicated.
	The insights into the criminal justice system and the role of young offender institutions that my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) shared with us were very important. I am struck by the fact that some perverse incentives exist for local authorities, whereby it is almost cheaper for them to have someone in a youth offender institution than it is for them to make some of the interventions or do some of the practical work in the community that might stop a young person ending up in that situation. We need to focus clearly on that.
	I do not think that anyone in the Chamber can have failed to be moved by the comments that the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) made about the appalling case of Claire Wilson, the 21-year-old mother-to-be who was stabbed to death, and about the impact that it has had on the community in the hon. Lady's constituency. I am sure that everyone in the House would wish to pass on their best wishes and respects to Miss Wilson's friends and family and to all those who have been directly affected by that appalling incident.
	Equally, the hon. Lady highlighted the fact that we must not lose sight of the good community work being done across the country. I pay tribute to those working in her constituency and to those, as we have heard, working in constituencies across the country. Sporting activity can be used as a way of engaging young people, albeit not simply by giving them something positive to do, but by being a catalyst to leverage in positive things such as education, self-respect and self-esteem, which can make a long-lasting difference.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening) has had a long-standing interest in combating gangs and the postcode approach. Young people are being robbed on the street because of their possessions. She also made an important point about how the British crime survey has only belatedly taken the under-16s into account.
	The hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) made a powerful contribution about how we should not treat young people as an amorphous group. I had a discussion with about 200 young people that was organised by the YMCA. One young person posed this question to me: "If you saw a group of older people out on the street, would you describe them as a gang?" That young person was trying to articulate the fact that people are grouped too readily. We should look at young people as individuals and try to see the challenges and issues that they face, rather than trying to say that all young people are bad or writing people off. The points that the hon. Lady made were very powerful.
	I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) that we need a measured debate. Knife crime is not something that we should see as being confined simply to inner-city areas; rather, it is more wide ranging. I have read the Centre for Social Justice report in detail and have met colleagues as well.

David Hanson: I thank hon. Members for the constructive way in which this debate has been approached. This is my first debate in my new position as a Home Office Minister, just as it is my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary's first debate in his new role. I suspect that not all our debates will adopt the same tone, but this one has been very constructive.
	I should like to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) for the positive way in which he kicked off the debate, and for tabling the motion before us today. He made the important point—which was echoed by my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott)—that many young people are not, and will not be, involved in crime and lead good, decent lives. For those who have become involved in criminal activity, there is often a reason for their doing so. Part of our job as Ministers is to tackle those underlying reasons, as well as their consequences.
	I thank the hon. Member for Hornchurch (James Brokenshire) for his welcome, and for his gracious tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Coaker), who served in my post for some years and did a sterling job, working with the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Campbell), to focus everyone across government on the issue of knife crime and other important areas.
	We have had an interesting debate today on some extremely complex and disturbing issues. If we could solve them easily, the Government and the Opposition would undoubtedly do so. The hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) made an important contribution on culture and role models. The hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) talked about enforcement, early intervention and the role of custody, and about supporting alternative activities and family support. We heard a characteristically thoughtful speech from the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) about the use of custody and the need for intervention and education. He talked about partnership working, parenting, school failure and sentencing policy. He also touched on social justice and other related issues.
	These are all important issues that we are seeking to address, and we are committed to doing that through the youth crime action plan and the tackling knife crime action programme. I recognise the Conservatives' and Liberal Democrats' commitment to these issues, but I hope that the House will make no mistake: the Government are committed to trying to find workable, practical solutions to reducing knife crime and to tackling its underlying causes. These matters were also raised by the hon. Members for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb), for Monmouth, for Putney and for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), and by my hon. Friends the Members for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) and for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington. I shall come to the important report produced by the Select Committee chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) in a moment.

Grant Shapps: I beg to move,
	That this House expresses disappointment at the minimal take-up of the Government's Homeowner Mortgage Support Scheme, Mortgage Rescue Scheme, many of the Homebuy schemes, and the facility for zero stamp duty for zero carbon homes; notes that the Government's planning guidance on housing has led to a glut of 5 flats, the destruction of gardens and a shortage of family homes; asserts that the lowest level of housebuilding since World War II exposes the failures of the Government's top-down and undemocratic regional planning process; believes that the Government's Home Information Packs have harmed the housing market further during the recession; regrets the Government's failure to publish a Housing Reform Green Paper; and 10 registers disappointment at the rapid and regular change in housing ministers leading to the appointment of a fourth Housing Minister in less than 18 months.
	I offer a warm welcome to the new Minister for Housing as he takes up his post. I know that his background and experience will be an asset to this important Department. He actually becomes the ninth Housing Minister since this Government came to power. He is the fourth that I have faced across the Dispatch Box in the last two years and the third in the last nine months. I therefore hope that he enjoys better security of tenure than his three immediate predecessors, who lasted 211 days, 254 days and 246 days respectively. I would not want to bet my house, however, on the right hon. Gentleman lasting beyond the next election.
	I would like to offer the Minister a piece of advice; I encourage him to look at the recently produced Conservative green paper on housing, which puts forward a number of ideas that the Government could adopt immediately for their own housing programme, although it seems to have caused a little confusion with the right hon. Gentleman's immediate predecessor, who seems to have taken our "right to move" policy a little too literally.
	I know that the right hon. Gentleman sat around the Cabinet table for the first time this morning. He may have harboured concerns that it was his rugged good looks that had won him a seat around the Cabinet table, but I am absolutely confident that he is there for much more than window dressing and that he will do a fine job. I wish him every success.
	Let us start this evening's debate by thinking about those people who are lucky enough to own their own homes, but who are desperately trying to keep them by paying their mortgages. The Prime Minister likes to stand regularly at the Dispatch Box and claim that he is offering "Real help now" through the home owners mortgage support scheme, intended to allow people to postpone paying interest on their mortgages for up to two years. It was announced on 3 December, but not launched until 21 April, with an estimated 17,000 people repossessed during that period of delay. Perhaps the Minister will tell us how many households have so far received help under that scheme.
	The Chancellor called the new scheme real help for home owners at risk of repossession, but it is not even available to many home owners. When first announced, the then Housing Minister claimed it would cover some 70 per cent. of the mortgage market. She said that she wanted to see "all lenders" signed up to the scheme, but the reality is that fewer than half of mortgage lenders are signed up to the scheme, with some estimates suggesting it may not be much more than a quarter. Since the former Minister for Housing claimed she wanted to see them all signed up, can the present Minister for Housing tell us when he thinks that might eventually happen?
	When the scheme finally launched on 21 April, the then Minister also said that six other lenders would shortly join the scheme. She described that as happening "as soon as possible", but the new Minister was kind enough to reply to a parliamentary question just yesterday, saying that only one additional mortgage lender had so far joined the scheme. Will he tell us when the other five are going to join it?
	If the home owners mortgage support scheme has not worked, how about the mortgage rescue scheme? Now this is a scheme that invites registered social landlords to buy up equity in the homes of anybody struggling to pay their mortgage. It was announced on 3 September, but not launched until 16 January. This was a two-year, £285 million scheme designed to help 6,000 of the "most vulnerable families" to avoid repossession. Four months into the two years, instead of anything like 6,000, just two families have been rescued. Perhaps the Minister will therefore confirm that on the current trend, only 12 families will be helped by this scheme over the two-year period. I understand that that is despite more than 4,000 home owners approaching their local authorities for help and an estimated 31,000 homes repossessed since the time the scheme was launched.

Robert Key: I wish the Minister well in his aspiration to build more homes, but may I invite him to revisit the whole question of a one-size-fits-all housing policy for the country? He will recall that the former Salisbury district council ended up responding to the regional spatial strategy with a decision by the Liberal Democrat administration to build a huge new community in the middle of the countryside, with no infrastructure support. Will the Minister consider areas such as mine carefully? It has an area of outstanding natural beauty, a special area of conservation river, a world heritage site and a national park. Will he consider the absurdity that in those circumstances, the planning authority does not have to listen to the water and sewerage companies? No statutory consultation with them is required, they are simply instructed, in completely inappropriate circumstances, "You will provide the water and sewerage." We have to address that problem in the wider context of housing provision right across the country.

John Healey: I have worked with my hon. Friend for a long time and I have a great deal of time for him, but he has just stolen some of my best lines. He is right. We have tried to ensure that we do not make the same mistakes as they did in the 1990s. Moreover, we have fundamentally different values, and a different view of the role of Government when people are struggling and the economy is in recession. That is why we have acted where we can to try to help people stay in their own homes. We have acted to try to help firms stay in business. We have acted to try to help people stay in work. That is the fundamental duty of a Labour Government when people are in trouble.
	The universal support that we have tried to put in place for all families and households irrespective of means and circumstances includes free access to advice desks in courts across the country. That is an important part of the help that has been made available. It also includes the negotiation of a comprehensive range of support from lenders through the home owners mortgage support scheme, which has ensured that lenders view repossession as a last resort, rather than moving faster to try to repossess.
	The motion mentions the special schemes for people in specific circumstances. For example, more than 130 vulnerable households have so far benefited under the mortgage rescue scheme. It does not necessarily entail a simple buy-back of those homes; it can mean—as it has done in many cases— a freeze in the repossession actions by lenders. The scheme is not simply about stepping in to take over the ownership and equity for people who cannot pay the mortgage at all. Local authorities report to us that as a result of the scheme, more than 4,000 households that have been struggling with their mortgages have received free advice from their local authority.
	The measures are designed to be more than the sum of their parts. The combination of mortgage advice, intervention in the courts and lenders viewing repossession as a last resort means that in the first quarter of this year—a time when many would expect repossessions to rise—we have seen a 40 per cent. fall in applications to the courts by lenders to take possession of people's homes.
	The hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield said that repossessions were at a record high. Repossessions were at a record high in the early 1990s. They were at a record high of more than 75,000 in 1991, when one in 12 households were in arrears and 1.5 million people were in negative equity. The combination of the action we have taken to try to help people stay in their homes means that at the very point at which one might expect the number of repossessions to go through the roof, as it did in previous recessions, only 12,800 were reported in the first quarter of this year. The result is that the director general of the Council of Mortgage Lenders said last month that his forecast of repossession numbers this year now looks pessimistic, and he expects to revise it. That revision is a direct result of the action that we have taken, in combination with lower interest rates and other actions that we have taken on the economy.
	We know that first-time buyers have been hard hit by a lack of credit, with lenders in some cases requiring deposits of up to 40 per cent. So despite falling house prices, they are unable to get on to the property ladder. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) mentioned home information packs, but it is the lack of access to credit that is the fundamental cause of stagnation in the housing market. There is no evidence to suggest that home information packs have added to the difficulties. On the contrary, a survey by Connells estate agents showed that sales with HIPs get to exchange six days earlier. ICM has highlighted the fact that more than eight out of 10 first time buyers in particular want more information, and HIPs are part of the answer.
	The hon. Gentleman invited me to look at his Green Paper on housing and stronger foundations. I have done so, and I was struck by several aspects of it, not least the introduction by the Leader of the Opposition. He said:
	"Generations of families are trapped in social housing, denied the chance to break out...I don't want a child's life-story to be written before they're even born".

Andrew Love: I thank my right hon. Friend for being so generous with his time. I wanted the opportunity, like many others here tonight, to congratulate him on his new role, which he is fulfilling with great promise this evening. The implication of what my right hon. Friend said about Conservative party policy is, of course, much greater. The last time the Conservatives deregulated rents, they said, "Let housing benefit take the strain." The implication for public expenditure of such proposals from a party that says that we have to restrict public expenditure is either that such expenditure will go through the roof or that tenancies will be jeopardised across the country.

Sarah Teather: May I begin by welcoming the Housing Minister and all the new ministerial team to their roles? Obviously, the Minister is not new to the Department, but I am sure that he will find the housing brief the most interesting and challenging part of the Communities and Local Government portfolio. Personally, I am disappointed and sorry to see his predecessor, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright), go to his new post as Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, and I hope that the Minister will pass on my best wishes to him. It became almost a weekly ritual for us to debate housing in Westminster Hall, and he always made his points with charm and courtesy. I thank him for that.
	It is a great frustration for me to debate yet another Conservative motion that has nothing positive to say. The Conservative analysis of Government failures in housing seems largely correct: it is certainly true that the Government's mortgage support scheme has so far helped just two people, that the facility for zero stamp duty for zero-carbon homes has helped just 18, that Government policies are leading to woefully inadequate numbers of homes being built, and that almost all of them are small flats. It is also a statement of the obvious that the Prime Minister appears to show a careless disregard for his own Housing Ministers, but where are the new ideas in the motion?
	The motion is just one long whinge, and I for one find it deeply depressing. We have just lived through probably the most difficult few weeks in politics that I have experienced in my lifetime, and I suspect that most hon. Members will not be able to remember any time as difficult. Faith in representative democracy and in this place is at an all-time low: just one person in three turned out to vote last week, and it is really difficult to persuade people that politics actually matters and can make a difference.
	I have spent most of the last few weeks going into schools, and it has been harder than ever to convince young people that being an MP is an amazing and incredible job because one has an opportunity to change, not just the life of one person, but whole systems. Yet we are stuck here until 10 o'clock on a Tuesday evening debating an Opposition motion that does not mention a single idea for changing anything at all. It is no wonder that voters are disillusioned—I feel disillusioned too.

David Drew: I hope that I can help the hon. Lady. Nowhere in the Conservative motion or the amendments proposed by the Government and the Liberal Democrats is there any mention of rural housing and the crisis that exists there. I know that hon. Members in all parties know exactly what I am talking about. As the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) knows, I am a great advocate of community land trusts. We have to look at rural areas, as the housing crisis is not confined to urban Britain. Our towns and villages have insufficient housing for people of lower means, and I hope that the hon. Lady will agree that we have to address that as well.

Sarah Teather: I agree completely with hon. Gentleman, although I point out that my amendment deals only with housing and makes no mention of the words "urban" or "rural" specifically. I also agree with him about community land trusts, which he and I have debated in Westminster Hall. The trusts are very important in Cornwall and many other rural areas, and they may even represent a policy on which we can achieve all-party agreement.
	I said that the Conservative motion was vacuous, but the Government amendment reminds me a little of the string quartet that kept playing as the Titanic sank. There is no acceptance of what is happening in the real world: the Government hunker down and comfort themselves by reeling off a list of statistics while closing their ears to the desperate cries of those who have lost their homes, who live in cramped and unacceptable homes or who have no hope whatsoever of getting even that.
	Some 1.8 million families are languishing on council lists waiting for a suitable home that they can afford to rent. In London, around one household in 10 is waiting to be rehoused. In my constituency, the figure is even higher, with one household in five stuck on the waiting list for a council or housing association property.
	Earlier, the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) mentioned the link with the British National party, and I think that he is right. Some of the areas worst affected in terms of housing are in the old Labour heartlands. The very people who elected this Government are the ones most let down on the issue of housing.
	Housing is a powder-keg issue. It ignites rows about race and immigration, and it provokes people to lose faith in the system. It is the very issue that fascist parties rely on to breed resentment and hate. The Leader of the House is correct to say that the Government should take responsibility for the rise of the BNP, and I completely agree. However, if there is to be any hope of tackling that sort of fascist politics, housing is where the Government have to start.
	What is needed is a serious investment in affordable housing to rent. The Government invested £12.5 billion in a VAT cut that made little or no difference to people's lives, when they could spent that on building tens of thousands of more homes for people to live in.
	The Government also need to accept that the old cross-subsidy model of house building is not going to build any new homes in the short term. They need to scrap Treasury targets on the number of units per unit of subsidy so that housing associations have the confidence to know that they can use the money available to build without facing penalties later.
	It is ridiculous that at the very time in a recession that we need house building to increase, building has been grinding to a halt. So much for the fiscal stimulus. By the time we get out of the recession, housing need will be greater, house prices will again spiral out of control, and we will not be able to do anything about it because the builders will all have retrained or gone back to Poland. We will have nothing with which to tackle the problem.
	The Government have a real opportunity to improve housing now. Major investment now could absolve them of the sins of the past 10 years. I hope they will realise that they have an opportunity now and a clear way to make amends. I was pleased to hear the new Minister say how important he thinks it is that councils should be able to build homes. Councils are desperate to be able to build new homes for families in their area. They have to pick up the pieces when homeless families land on their doorstep, but they have only limited powers to fix the problem.
	The Prime Minister made warm noises about that several months ago, but the proposals that were put forward were thin on the ground. The Minister was not sure how to answer the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) on how many new homes would be built with the new money available. We calculated that it would be about 900 homes. That is two or three for every local authority area, which will make only a tiny dent in the number of 1.8 million people on housing waiting lists.
	If councils are to be able to borrow to build, they need to know what their asset base and their rental income will be. Taking new homes alone out of the housing revenue account is not enough. We must have fundamental reform of the housing revenue account system now. I am pleased to hear from the Minister that it will conclude soon, but we have heard that for a very long time. Every time there is a change of Housing Minister, it gets further delayed.
	I was pleased to hear the Conservative spokesperson join our campaign to end the tenant tax, but I was left a little unclear about what the Conservatives' proposals would be. The hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) stated the position well for me. In my constituency, Brent, we receive a subsidy from poor tenants in Cambridge. It is invidious for poor tenants in Cambridge to be subsidising poor tenants' repairs in Brent, and a solution is needed. Our solution is that that should be topped up out of general taxation. People like me, who can afford to pay out of their taxes, should pay for that, but the Conservatives have no proposal at all, which means that there will be no money for repairs in places like my constituency.

Bob Russell: Does my hon. Friend recall that I could not get an answer from those on the Conservative Front Bench as to whether a Conservative Government would bring back the building of council housing?

Sarah Teather: Yes. It was a depressing moment. The Conservative spokesman seemed to be unclear about which direction he would go in, were he to become a Minister. We are calling for a general election and he hopes to become a Minister, but he does not seem quite sure of the direction in which he would take his party.

Anne Main: I am following the hon. Lady's argument on empty properties with great interest, because empty dwelling management orders, as she knows, are a totally under-utilised device. Indeed, they have been completely under-utilised by the Liberal Democrat-led council in St. Albans, so, before she lectures all of us on bringing back empty homes, I should say that I have been pressing my council to get its empty homes back into use. However, it has not as yet chosen to use that device. We all could all lecture each other on empty homes, so I hope that the hon. Lady will bear that in mind.

Julia Goldsworthy: My hon. Friend was just talking about how the mortgage rescue scheme has failed to help many people who face losing their homes. Last week, a very concerning case was raised with me of an individual who, at the beginning of December last year, thought that they would be one of the first beneficiaries of such a scheme, but, at the end of April, they were told that they no longer qualified. During that period, their mortgage payments were frozen, and they are now more likely to face repossession as a result of their being rejected for the scheme. Should not the Government be helping to prevent such problems rather than making matters worse?

Sarah Teather: I absolutely agree: it is a very concerning case. The difficulty is that many criteria have been drawn tightly, and it has been difficult for the people implementing the scheme to understand exactly what will happen as they go through the process. It takes a long time before someone is approved or found not to be eligible to claim help, and, in the meantime, they can get into great difficulty.
	The Government introduced a pre-action protocol that I thought contained many useful things. I agreed with all the protocol's sentiments, which we called for before the Government published it, but the problem is that it has no teeth, and I cannot understand why the Government are not prepared to reform mortgage law to give it teeth. If we were to reform mortgage law, we could give the courts the power to intervene to enforce some of the good things that are in the pre-action protocol. We would also be able to deal with the situation when a landlord's home is repossessed and the people who rent it get no notice at all, except when they go home and find that the locks have been changed. We can deal with much of that simply by giving the courts the power to intervene and then to put the rest into guidance, as the Government have done. I pressed the Minister's predecessor repeatedly on the issue, and I hope that the new Minister will consider it afresh.
	I am pretty fed up to be debating another Conservative motion that has nothing in it.

Karen Buck: I, too, should like to welcome the Minister for Housing to that most important post. About three quarters of householders in this country are home owners. For most of those people, most of the time, being a home owner has been a happy and successful experience. It has benefited them and their families enormously. Obviously, the majority of people still aspire to be home owners. However, people in many of those families are experiencing real pain because of a combination of factors, including lack of affordability and changes in their circumstances; in some cases they will have lost their job. That leaves many families genuinely worried, and they are sometimes at risk of losing their homes. That rightly causes concern to all of us. My right hon. Friend has already recognised that in the early 1990s the level of repossessions, with all the pain that repossessions put families through, was at least as high as it is now; in some cases it was higher. However, that should not stop us from focusing a great deal of attention and support on those families. It is absolutely critical that we do everything that we can to reduce repossessions and to help people through a difficult time.
	On looking at mortgage law, I agree with the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) that we should in some cases do more to enforce controls against lenders who are excessively zealous in the action that they are taking. One particular group of people about whom we need to worry are tenants in buy-to-let properties. In some instances, we should also worry about unauthorised tenants in properties in cases in which the mortgage holder has defaulted. Such tenants have virtually no protection and are at risk of being thrown out, sometimes with no notice whatever. In many cases, they then become the responsibility of the local authority. I know that the Government are considering the issue; it is important that they look at it closely and act swiftly. For a host of reasons—for the sake of the people involved, and because of the pressures on local authorities—we need to do what we can to support those individuals.

Julia Goldsworthy: The hon. Lady makes an important point, and I agree that it is important that the Government and the Minister should come forward with proposals as soon as possible. Does she agree that the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill, which is currently being considered by the House, provides an opportunity to make such proposals, and does she agree that the Minister should make the most of that opportunity to bring forward proposals as soon as possible?

Andrew Lansley: I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute briefly to this important debate. I particularly enjoyed hearing the opening speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps). There is nothing that I wish to add to or detract from his critique of Government policy and his exposition of our policies.
	My purpose is simply to add some remarks relating specifically to South Cambridgeshire and the application of Government housing policy even in the months still available to them. Much needs to be done by the Government to offset the difficulties that we face in meeting our future housing need. The Minister will be aware that South Cambridgeshire is one of those places where housing need is the most acute, as are the problems of affordability and the house price to earnings ratio. In Cambridgeshire we have never taken the view that we wish to constrain the availability of additional housing supply; we have always actively sought opportunities to match new housing supply to the evident requirement for employment and new housing in our area.
	That is why, five or six years ago, we identified additional housing requirements through the county structure plan. In my constituency, we have given up a great deal of green belt. New developments are happening in Cambourne and in Trumpington Meadows. Through the structure plan, we are committed to the development of Northstowe as a new town of more than 9,500 homes. We have always advocated that. We recognised, after an exhaustive process through the structure plan, that that location was the right place for us to take the next step towards supplying a substantial number of new houses as part of a large increase overall. In my constituency, even on our existing plans, we intended to double the rate of new housing in the next few years.
	It will be no surprise to hon. Members that, in the fourth quarter of last year, much of the impetus simply stopped. It is vital to regain some of that initiative. The Government can do several things to help increase housing supply and provide more affordable and social housing in South Cambridgeshire. Like others, I have witnessed the number of people seeking social housing more than double during my time as a Member of Parliament.
	Some of my hon. Friends have already made the point, so I will not go on about it, that in South Cambridgeshire and Cambridge city, more than £11 million disappears in negative subsidy on the housing revenue account—something approaching 40 per cent. of the rental income in South Cambridgeshire. By the measure of housing need, which is the starting point for negative subsidy, we clearly have dramatically rising needs. We also need social housing and I therefore urge Ministers to act quickly to enable us in South Cambridgeshire and in Cambridge city to respond to the dramatic housing need by retaining more resources to improve our existing housing stock and add to it.
	Secondly, let me consider Northstowe. The new Minister for Housing told us nothing about the Government's plans for eco-towns in South Cambridgeshire. Despite all our efforts to offer additional sites for major new developments, the Government wanted to wish an eco-town upon us. We said that it was in the wrong place, there was no infrastructure to support it and that it was environmentally unsustainable. The Government wanted to go ahead, we fought and, in the space of several months last year, we defeated the proposal. It went away and I hope that it does not come back. We in Cambridgeshire will decide where best to support new housing supply.
	However, I stress to Ministers that, during the discussion last year with the Minister's predecessor but one, we made it clear that we wanted Northstowe in my constituency to be the first eco-town. In July 2007, just after the Prime Minister took office, one of his first proposals, which he set out in  The Sunday Times, was to build eco-towns. The example that he gave was described as "Oakington in Cambridgeshire." Oakington, which is in my constituency, is the location of the planned new town of Northstowe. We want it to be an eco-town, an exemplar and the first new town of its kind in this country. We want it to go ahead, but that will not happen at the moment. Gallagher, the developer, has backed out and the proposal depends on the Homes and Communities Agency, with Government backing, being prepared to turn it into the first exemplary eco-town. I urge Ministers who are taking on their new responsibilities to consider positively how we can make Northstowe the first eco-town.
	If we are to take a rational approach to providing additional housing, the Government must remove from the regional spatial strategy in the east of England the specification that the housing targets are "a minimum". If we carry on as we are, with little new housing being built, opportunistic developers will try to claim that, because we are not on track to meet the housing target in the regional spatial strategy, they can make highly speculative proposals for new house building in highly unsuitable locations at some unspecified time in the future. We will end up with an enormous overhang of designations for new housing in the wrong places, when local authorities should decide, with local people's support, where that new housing should be built, with the necessary infrastructure support. I urge Ministers to reject that misuse of language in the regional spatial strategy, which drives that bad effect.

Robert Syms: Housing is an important subject for many of our constituents, and I therefore welcome this opportunity to make a small contribution to the debate tonight. I have raised questions on a number of occasions about the housing revenue account and the negative subsidy. I do not pretend that there is an elegant or easy answer to this complex and difficult question, but many areas of the country are contributing substantial sums of money, which is having a big impact on rents and on the ability of housing authorities and arm's length management organisations to deliver a service. It is not necessarily coming from the leafier or more prosperous areas of the UK. There are areas such as Bolsover and Chesterfield—and even areas such as Barking and Dagenham in outer London—that have major housing problems, but are contributing to the pot. The Government need to come up with some kind of long-term solution, so that authorities contributing a lot of money can plan and perhaps provide some additional housing stock—or at least spend money on reducing the voids.
	More importantly, when I talked to the Poole housing partnership, I found that it welcomed the decent homes standard and the money spent on housing stock. It also said, however, that if it had to continue paying the massive sums of money levied, it might not be able to maintain the housing stock in the long term. It might then have to look at some alternative arrangement and become more like a housing association. That would be a pity, because its satisfaction rates are very high. It is empowering tenants, teaching them to do all sorts of things like use computers and helping them with advice on how to deal with debt. The relative income levels of council tenants in my Poole constituency are surprisingly low, so there is a real need, as house prices are very high and social housing is going to take a major part of the strain.
	As I said, there is no easy solution, but there is a problem. Many Government Back Benchers have realised that at the current rate of increase, it will not be many years before as much as £1 billion will be raised from tenants' rents and then redistributed to other areas. The Minister said earlier that he would soon come up with a solution; we certainly need one soon.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) referred to home information packs, which were debated in connection with the Housing Bill. When we raised the question of what happens with these packs, which are time limited, if people do not sell their homes, the Minister always assured us that everything would be swept up when the home was eventually sold—but if someone puts their house up for sale in the current housing market and it does not sell for a while, they might have to provide two or three packs, with attendant costs and consequences. An argument for HIPs might be made in a booming economy, but in a housing market that is extremely sticky and likely to remain so for a while, they are an additional burdensome cost for people trying to sell their homes. They have become an impediment, so if my party gains the confidence of the British people and forms the next Government, it will repeal the HIPs as an important element in the strategy for housing market recovery.
	I think that the Homes and Communities Agency is a welcome development. In the current economic situation, it will play a major and important role in kick-starting some developments that have fallen by the wayside. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) mentioned the agency in the context of Cambridgeshire.
	Clearly, the Government are doing some good things, but what they have done in other respects is surprising. If someone had asked me in 1997 how many social housing units I thought the Government would provide during their term in office, I would have said, "Well, this is a Labour Government, so they'll provide a lot of social housing." I know that decent homes standards was their priority, but the reality is that the Government's record on building council housing and other forms of social housing has been remarkably poor. The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) often makes his point with a degree of force and common sense. The result is that fewer houses are available for those who need them.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) mentioned armed forces housing. I welcome the recent legislative change to allow members of the armed forces to count for something on housing lists. That is rather a good thing.
	The overall housing situation is one of great difficulty. I agree with the Minister that fewer people currently losing their homes. Given that we have a crash market, many lenders are being sensitive and sensible in their dealings with people, but that is not because of Government policy. As we heard earlier, Government policy has not achieved an awful lot. The Council of Mortgage Lenders has always said that provided that people who are in trouble tell lenders honestly that they are in trouble, it may well be possible to work out a solution. I welcome that.
	As I said during the economic debate the other day, I am not very pessimistic about the long term. I am pessimistic about our levels of debt, but I am not pessimistic about the British economy. I think that it will grow next year. Given the amount of money that the Government have spent, the devaluation and the reduction in interest rates, it would be very surprising if things did not start to move. In the light of some of the initial figures that we are seeing, I think it legitimate to say that the position is stabilising, and will probably improve next year.
	I hope that that will cause the housing market to stabilise as well. One of the big differences between the situation today and the situation in the early 1990s is the substantial level of personal debt among households. We know that unemployment will rise, although we pray that it will not rise by too much. People who lose their jobs, who do not receive help with their mortgages for quite some time, and who have credit card debts and other loans, will very quickly find themselves in financial trouble.
	Finally, let me point out to the Minister that Dudley is one of the authorities that make a major contribution in the form of negative housing subsidy, and that that issue needs to be considered. We need a formula, which may have to be a compromise. Clearly funds cannot be taken out of central London overnight, but we need some way of getting through the current circumstances. We should ensure that authorities such as the Poole housing partnership can plan, maintain their independence and provide a good service, but we should also have a needs-based housing formula.

Jeremy Corbyn: I welcome the debate, and congratulate both Ministers on their appointments. I look forward to hearing what the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, North (Mr. Austin) has to say in response to the debate.
	I have the privilege of representing an inner-city community where housing is an enormous issue. Only 30 per cent. of my constituents are owner-occupiers; the rest occupy council, housing association or privately rented properties. The levels of deprivation and overcrowding are extremely serious. I compliment the Government on the amount of money they have given us to establish decent home standards, improvements in community areas on estates and better estate management—that has been a huge step forward and a welcome development—but there are still many people on the housing waiting list, many who cannot even get on to the housing waiting list, and many on the internal transfer list.
	The knock-on effects of overcrowding in producing poor health, under-achievement in education and all the other social breakdown issues are often directly related to housing. We all know of families who are experiencing hard times because of overcrowding, but when such families are given decent houses or flats, everything suddenly starts to look a great deal better. I believe that we—Government and local authorities—must do everything possible to improve the housing situation.
	In London as a whole, 200,000 families are living in overcrowded accommodation and 50,000 are living in temporary accommodation. Those figures are horrendous by any stretch of the imagination. The position can be dealt with only through a combination of policies, including a large amount of public investment in housing for people in desperate need.
	While I understand why the Government are so sensitive about the issues of home ownership and mortgages, I feel that, since the 1950s, the country has developed an obsession with home ownership, often at the expense of social rented accommodation. There is an obsessive belief that everyone should aspire to home ownership, while council housing is seen as the housing of last resort. I should love to see people being given a genuine choice between renting and buying, with no social stigma attached to not owning a home.
	No other country in Europe has become involved in home ownership to the same degree, and no other country in Europe has the same levels of excessive personal debt—largely because of home ownership, or because of the ability to borrow against what were perceived to be permanently rising house values and all the problems that accompanied that. I believe that we should take a rain check, and think it all through a bit more.
	Both the Minister and the Conservative Front Bencher are new to their posts so I am sure they will find it difficult to answer all the points raised, but I would be grateful if they tried to deal with some of them. The latest Government statement on house spending includes the allocation of £100 million for new council development. That is very good news, but it will not build many homes. Although £100 million might sound like a lot of money, council places in London cost about £100,000 per unit to develop. That allocation is a very good start, but we have to go a lot further, and a lot faster. We must also recognise that one problem is that, because of the Tory Government's policies in the 1980s of pushing sales of council properties and compulsory competitive tendering for council services, local authorities currently do not have enough skilled architects, planners and all the other expertise required to develop a housing programme, as that has either been sold off or gone away.
	Over the past few years in London, it has generally been housing associations that have developed new housing—that is also the case in most other parts of the country. The Minister needs to look at a number of issues in this regard, such as the relationship between housing associations and the Homes and Communities Agency, and the possibility of zoning them because there are some highly inefficient housing associations with large numbers of properties scattered over a huge area and the on-costs of managing them are very high. The housing associations are aware of that, and some of them are undertaking sensible transfers to bring about more efficient management. We also need to look at the democratic running of housing associations, because there is a degree of accountability for council tenants and leaseholders as they can get hold of a councillor or council official, but I do not find the same degree of accountability in some housing associations. Some are exemplary, but others are truly awful in their management methods and their tenants' representation methods, and we need to be tougher with them. They are not private companies; they are handling very large sums of public money and dealing with housing applicants who are nominated to them by local housing authorities.
	I started my contribution by pointing out that in my constituency, as in most in London, the fastest growing sector is the private rented sector. In an intervention on the Minister I made the point that my local authority, like many others, now routinely nominates people to the private rented sector because there are no council or housing association places for those in desperate housing need. The rent deposit is paid by the local authority, and housing benefit pays for the rent; and the rent levels are astronomical. I could give many examples of flats in the same council block where, for example, one is council-owned and is paid for by housing benefit of £100 a week and the other has been bought under the right to buy and then rented out on the private market at £300 a week, which is also paid for by housing benefit. The amount of public money we are pouring into the pockets of private landlords is ludicrous; the total is several billions per year in London. The total housing benefit bill in London is about £4 billion; I do not know the exact breakdown between the public and private sectors, but I am sure the unit cost of private rented accommodation is much higher. In the short term, there is not a lot we can do about that, as the private rented sector is providing housing for people, but rent controls in the private sector would prevent profiteering. Above all, we should provide far more places built to a decent standard, because I am shocked and appalled by the conditions of the private rented accommodation in which many people are placed at present.
	Members' work at our advice surgeries has made us all armchair experts on housing allocation policies. People come to us and say, "I'd like to get a house as we're a bit overcrowded." I look up and ask, "Any illness in the family?" They reply, "Not much", so I say, "How much? What's wrong with you?" When they tell me, I say, "Yes, that sounds bad." We go through the whole process, and then I might think that they will get a few more medical, overcrowding or sharing points. There is an entire science involved. I wish that that science did not exist; I wish it was not necessary. Within that science, we endlessly change what the priorities are, and two groups of people, at opposite ends of the scale, lose out. First, most local authorities have long since ceased to house single people unless they are either very vulnerable or desperately ill. There are many very aggrieved single people in their 20s and 30s who have chosen to lead a single life—that is their lifestyle choice—but have no chance of getting local authority housing. They have no chance of buying because their salaries are not high enough and they even find it difficult to go into shared ownership. We need to examine the lifestyle choices that people are making and start to reflect them a bit more. Let us move to the other end of the scale. The building programmes of local authorities, housing associations and private sector developers are all ignoring large families—they do exist. We need family-sized housing to be constructed as part of the entire development programme.
	Lastly, the Minister has doubtless been made aware of and fully understands all the issues associated with council housing and its finance. He has had plenty of time to get his head round that, having been in the job a whole day.

Justine Greening: This is the second housing debate that we have had in nearly as many months. Despite what has been said by Government Members, our first debate focused on the important issue of social housing but we felt that there was more to talk about, as housing is such a vital issue for our party. We therefore wanted to hold a second debate today, in our Opposition time, to highlight the many major issues affecting housing in England. In fact, we called this debate to represent the real concerns and difficulties in respect of housing that are faced by millions of people in Britain—the first-time buyers finding it almost impossible to get on to the housing ladder, the home owners struggling to pay their mortgages and stay in their homes, and the families stranded in overcrowded houses or whose names lie on forgotten waiting lists. Above all, the underlying problem that Ministers never want to talk about is the present depressed rate of house building. As of 2008, it has been lower in every year of this Administration than it was in even the worst years of the Major or Thatcher Governments.
	The people we represent face uncertainty and anxiety about whether they will get a home or keep the one that they have. If their circumstances change and they have to move, they are worried about whether they can remain in housing that meets their needs. Yet again, Ministers have talked a good game today about tackling housing issues—as ever, we have a lot of warm words—but I am afraid that the delivery has been sadly lacking. In both the good times and the bad times in our economy, there have been a series of failed schemes, headline-grabbing initiatives and misguided policies. The result is that Britain's housing is in a very sorry state indeed.
	Concerns have been raised by hon. Members of all parties about what is happening in their constituencies. The hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) talked about the challenges faced by leaseholders, and she pointed out that we must make sure that our desire to enable people to get on to the housing ladder is implemented in a sustainable way. That was a fair point to raise.
	The hon. Lady doubted the Opposition's commitment to social housing, but I assure her that we would not have devoted two debates to housing if we did not recognise how important the topic was. We may have debates about policy, but we would not spend time listening to the concerns expressed by hon. Members in this House and by people out in the country if we did not recognise the importance of the issue. As a prospective Government in waiting, my party must be able to give people a proper alternative whenever the next election is held, and that means that we must have an informed policy on housing.
	We also heard from a number of Opposition Members in the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) said that communities can come up with good suggestions about where housing should go. He said that people will take responsibility for discussing how their housing needs can be met, and my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) made a similar point.
	Unfortunately, the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) is not in his place, but he made some very fair points in expressing about his concerns about housing associations. He spoke about the need to make sure that they are accountable to the tenants whom they look after, and he made some thoughtful observations about housing waiting lists and the housing allocation priorities that local authorities constantly have to juggle.
	I am sure that we can all relate to what the hon. Gentleman said, but the problem underlying everything is the fact that the amount of our housing stock is so constrained. That is why we have to keep coming back to the Government's lack of delivery on housing. They have been in office for 12 years now, so we cannot say, "Well, it may get better in a few years." All the evidence suggests that there is something fundamentally flawed in the Government's approach to housing policy, as otherwise more houses would have been built before now.
	We know that people are finding it hard to get on to the property ladder, as the number of first-time buyers fell to an estimated 300,000 in 2007, compared to 500,000 10 years before. There are also real concerns about sustainability: in 2007, nearly one mortgage in 10 was for 100 per cent. or more, and the problem is made worse by the lack of house building. On average, 23,000 fewer homes have been built every year under this Government, and housing starts this year are at their lowest since the 1920s. Social housing is beset with problems, too. As we heard, there are 1.8 million people on the waiting list. That is the consequence of a steady lack of house building in Britain over the past 12 years.
	That is compounded by the fact that people who have accommodation often find it unsuitable. We have 560,000 households living in overcrowded conditions in England, and 200,000 of those households are right here in London. I am sure that many London MPs who participated in the debate today see those people in their surgeries every day. It is difficult to discuss their problems because of the underlying fact that not enough new housing is being built to give them a chance of having a home that meets their needs.
	We spoke about the people who own their home but are struggling to stay in it. Repossession claims have soared from 67,000 a year in 1997 to a staggering 143,000 repossessions in 2008. The Government have talked the talk about how to help these people, but the mortgage rescue scheme that the Government launched has helped just two people. Ministers may say that it will take time for the scheme to produce results, but that was not the message last year when it was launched. Expectations have been badly let down by the scheme.
	There has been a range of failed housing policies, such as home information packs, which add cost to the sale process and stifle the supply to the market. Only today, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said that it thought that HIPs had held back the market. As we heard, we still have no definition of a zero-carbon home. The Treasury has given tax relief on 18 homes, but the Department for Communities and Local Government does not know how to define them. Only under a Labour Government could one Department have a definition and another say that there is no definition.
	We heard about eco-towns, a complete disaster project that ran into the sands because local people said no. We know that green issues are important to people throughout the country, yet when it came to smuggling in eco-towns through house building in inappropriate places, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) pointed out, local communities will not have it. They want Whitehall to work with them and give them the responsibility for deciding where the extra housing will be. They do not want the top-down targets that the Government have given them.
	Let us not forget the disaster of the botched announcement on stamp duty last summer. We have not talked about that today, but if the housing market was under strain up until then, the Chancellor managed to stagnate it with that botched announcement and totally dried up the market in a way that would have been hard to achieve if someone had had to sit down and think about it as a challenge, but the Chancellor managed it.
	The range and gravity of housing problems under the present Government and the Department are clear to see. Fewer houses are being built, and there is greater overcrowding, growing waiting lists, falling home ownership and rising repossessions. The Government's record on housing is reflected in the chaos that we have seen over the past week in the Communities and Local Government team. The Housing Minister has gone. The Communities Secretary has gone. Even the Under-Secretaries were moved. They are not here today to defend their record on housing, but given the Government's history of decisions in this area, perhaps leaving their team was the one good decision that they have made so far.
	We cannot go on as we are. We can tackle the issues that we have been debating today—get rid of home information packs, take nine of 10 first-time buyers out of stamp duty, get rid of the top-down targets set through the regional spatial strategy, and have local housing trusts that make sure that local communities can decide for themselves how much new housing they have and where it is located. However, we will not resolve any of these important matters until we have a general election. We have heard 12 years of failed housing policy. It is time to give the British people the general election that they so desperately need. Then we can have a Conservative Government who can deliver the sort of housing policy that will make a real difference to families throughout the country.

Ian Austin: I thank Opposition Members for welcoming me and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing to our new positions. This evening's debate has been a very useful early induction for both of us, not least because it has been such a good debate among Members in all parts of the House.
	Despite the disappointment about the changes, to which the Opposition's motion refers, I am delighted to be doing this job, because for many people their homes are not just their greatest asset but their greatest source of security and a strong foundation on which so much else depends: good health, getting a job, building a career, fulfilling potential at school and being part of a community. My predecessor as Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright), made a similar point in a similar debate several months ago, when he said that housing brings safety, security, community cohesion, health, life chances, prosperity and a host of other issues. I pay tribute to the work that he did and welcome all contributions that all Members have made today.
	My right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing rightly set out this Government's impressive housing record, which the motion before us entirely ignored. He set out also our efforts to maintain and build on that record, despite the difficult economic circumstances. We have been proactive and decisive, learning from the experience of the 1990s about the consequences of delay and inaction. Although the motion finds fault in a number of our policies, it fails to propose any alternative. The Opposition obviously want to criticise our record on housing supply, because that is what they are there for, but they do not tell us that this Government's efforts led to the highest levels of house building in 30 years in 2007-08.
	The Opposition's motion also neglects to mention the 110,000 households that have been helped into shared ownership and shared equity through our programmes, and the £29 billion that we have invested since 1997 to bring more than 1 million social rented homes up to scratch. The Opposition also failed to mention the significant strides that we have made on homelessness, rough sleeping and temporary accommodation: statutory homelessness decreased by 60 per cent. between 2003 and 2008; rough sleeping has fallen by 74 per cent.; the number of households in temporary accommodation is down by 33 per cent.; and we have ended the long-term use of bed and breakfast accommodation for families with children.
	That is an impressive track record. Every previous Housing Minister should be very proud of it, and we are committed to building on it. That is why we have acted proactively and decisively in the economic downturn to help people at risk of repossession, first-time buyers and the construction industry. Our priority has been to help those in financial difficulties to stay in their homes wherever possible, which contrasts with the 1990s, when the Government failed to act while people lost their homes.
	My right hon. Friend spoke about the wide range of measures that we have introduced—to strengthen universal support and to bring in specific schemes—and, as a result, the Council of Mortgage Lenders is now expected to revise downwards its forecasts of repossessions. Although our critics clearly want to focus on the number of households at the final stages of specific schemes, they do not want to talk about the real help that families are receiving. Lenders covering 80 per cent. of the market either have signed up to the home owner mortgage support scheme or offer their own comparative arrangements. Thousands of families are getting free advice from their local councils every month and lenders now have to prove to the courts that they have exhausted all other options before seeking to repossess.
	We have also introduced new support, in light of the restricted global supply of credit, to help first-time buyers get a foot on the housing ladder. We have also increased the availability of shared equity schemes and introduced a new "rent first, buy later" scheme. Demand for our existing schemes remains high.

Ian Austin: I shall be responding to the points that were made by those people who were present for the whole debate.
	There were more than 6,000 sales under the open market homebuy scheme in 2008-09, and from the experience of the 1990s we also know how destructive an economic downturn can be for the construction industry. We cannot afford to make the same mistakes twice, so we have put in place a comprehensive package of support: £1 billion at the Budget; buying up unsold stock from developers; bringing forward funding for affordable housing, including higher grant rates where needed; and the new kick-start fund to get faltering schemes going again. My right hon. Friend clearly demonstrated the scale of the Government's efforts to reduce the damage of the downturn on households and the construction industry now and in the future.
	I shall now turn to the specific points that were made in the debate. My hon. Friend—

Ian Austin: I will deal with that point in due course, but the point that I wanted to make related to my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck), who spoke with great eloquence about the impact on families who face repossession, and the position of leaseholders. I congratulate her on the work that she is doing to protect her constituents from a local Conservative council, whose policies were set out in great detail.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey), the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee, speaking with a knowledge and expertise that few in the House can match, made a fascinating contribution and a devastating critique of the Opposition's case. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn), who has made himself an expert on housing issues, made a thoughtful speech about the state of the housing market and the need to remove the stigma attached to rented housing.  [Interruption.] I shall move on to the questions asked by the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), if I may.
	First, I point out that my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North and the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) asked questions about the housing association movement. We have set up a new regulator for social housing, the Tenant Services Authority, which will drive improvements in standards and place tenants at the heart of regulation. It will also have a wider range of powers to intervene when things go wrong.
	The hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield raised a number of questions about the impact of the Government schemes. He asked how many additional lenders had confirmed that they were signing up to the home owner mortgage support scheme. I can tell him that Lloyds bank, Northern Rock, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Bradford & Bingley, Cumberland building society and others signed up to the scheme at its launch. He will be interested to hear that a number of others have confirmed that they will offer the scheme as soon as possible, including the Bank of Ireland, GMAC RFC, GE Money and others. There is no cut-off point by which lenders must sign up to the scheme.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about take-up of the home owner mortgage support scheme. It is a new scheme; nothing like it has ever been tried before. It enables eligible households in short-term difficulties to defer part of their mortgage interest payments. Lenders covering more than 80 per cent. of the market have either signed up to offer the Government-backed scheme or are offering comparable arrangements. Both the Council of Mortgage Lenders and the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association have welcomed the impact that the scheme is already having on borrowers getting in contact with their lenders to discuss options.
	The hon. Gentleman talked about the low take-up of the mortgage rescue scheme. It is targeted at vulnerable households—those made up of the elderly or the disabled and those with children—who would be eligible for help under homelessness legislation if their homes were repossessed. The scheme involves households getting thorough advice on their financial circumstances, and selling part of their home, which takes time. [Hon. Members: "How many?"] More than 130 households have had repossession action against them halted, and more than 1,000 households struggling with their mortgage have received free advice from their local authority. We believe that 6,000 households will be helped over the next two years.
	I hate to disappoint the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries), but I can only tell her that the eco-town programme was designed to deliver a final shortlist of up to 10 potential locations. However, decisions will be made on the basis of quality, not quantity. I cannot comment on specific areas, but it is not a done deal, and no decisions have been made on the locations in which work will go forward. The other point that she made was about the right to buy, which has helped thousands of families to realise their aspiration to own their homes. The Government completely support it.

Alistair Carmichael: May I say how pleased I am to have this opportunity to conclude our business this evening with a few remarks about the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi? She is rightly known and respected throughout the world for the quiet calm and the dignity with which she faces intolerable repression. She currently faces a process that, for the purposes of this debate, we will call a trial, but which, it is widely accepted, conforms to none of the recognised principles of natural justice that we would understand in this country.
	I welcome the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis) to his new position. I welcome his appointment; we are delighted to have him here. As the secretary of the all-party parliamentary group on democracy in Burma, may I say that we have always enjoyed a fruitful and close working relationship with his predecessors in the Foreign Office and with Ministers in the Department for International Development? I am confident that that relationship will continue under this Minister, whom I congratulate on his appointment. I wish him every success.
	The charge facing Aung San Suu Kyi is that of violating of the conditions of her house arrest. If she is convicted—we might reasonably say "when she is convicted", because the purpose of the trial is to obtain a further conviction—she stands to have a further five-year period of imprisonment imposed on her. The irony is that this imprisonment will be for the breach of a condition of her detention, which has already been declared illegal by the United Nations as a contravention of international law and of Burmese domestic law. This illegality heaped on illegality is a particular feature of Aung San Suu Kyi's position, and of the loathsome regime by which she is being oppressed in Burma.
	Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest on and off for 13 of the past 19 years. The process first started in 1989, when the martial law provisions of the time allowed for detention without charge or trial for a period of up to three years. It is a matter of public record that in the elections in 1990, the National League for Democracy, of which she is the leader, won some 82 per cent. of the available seats. That was a remarkable achievement, and an indication of the standing that she enjoys in her own country as well as in the wider international community. It is also a matter of record that the junta refused to recognise the results of the elections, and that at that point, it changed the rules to allow for her continued detention for up to five years.
	Aung San Suu Kyi was released from detention—at that point she was under house arrest—in 1995. She was placed under house arrest again, with additional conditions restricting her entitlement to travel, in 2000. I mention the restriction on travel because it is well known that as a consequence of those restrictions, she was unable to visit her dying husband in London for fear of not being allowed to return to Burma.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: Is it not an indication of the nature of the Burmese authorities that in the forthcoming trial of Aung San Suu Kyi on 12 June—which, as the hon. Gentleman has said, could lead to her imprisonment for five years—three out of four of her defence witnesses have been denied access to the court? The Burmese Government are producing 14 witnesses for the prosecution, yet she is to be allowed only one. Is it not even more shocking that members of the pro-democracy 1988 movement who are in jail are being denied adequate food? They are not allowed food parcels, and those who have suffered severe medical conditions, including heart attacks, are not allowed any medical supplies. Is that not an indication of the nature of the Burmese regime?

Ivan Lewis: I congratulate the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) on securing this Adjournment debate on this incredibly important issue, and on the responsible yet passionate way in which he made his argument from a very informed perspective. I also thank him for his generous congratulations on my appointment to my new post; I regard it as a tremendous honour to be a Minister of State in the Foreign Office with responsibility for the middle east, Burma and other similar issues. I am in day two of the job, so I hope Members will be tolerant as I respond to the best of my ability. May I also assure the hon. Gentleman that I intend to work very closely with his all-party group, and indeed with all all-party groups who have an interest in my new portfolio of responsibilities?
	A number of Members are present who have consistently raised issues in relation to Burma over a long period, and I believe that the cumulative pressure from Members in all parts of the House does in the end make a difference in international opinion. There are doubts about how much that impacts on the regime, but it is important that the House continues to offer oxygen in terms of the political situation and political realities in Burma. I therefore congratulate all Members who take an interest in these issues on continuing to bring them to the Floor of the House.
	As Members are aware, in the early morning of 14 May Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested simply for not reporting an intruder. Her trial on these absurd charges began on 18 May. The hon. Gentleman gave a different analogy, but a prisoner is being prosecuted apparently because the prison guards were asleep on the job. Our ambassador in Rangoon—I noted that the hon. Gentleman paid tribute to his leadership on these issues—has reported the following:
	"It's difficult to see anything but a guilty verdict...these trials tend to be pre-scripted. All decisions of any significance in Burma are made by the ubiquitous 'higher authority'.
	He continued:
	"The generals will want to make sure Suu Kyi is unable to play a role in the elections next year."
	That seems pre-scripted and pre-destined, and the point has been made by hon. Members. He continued:
	"So the betting is on a sentence that extends her house arrest well into 2010 or beyond".
	I have no information on the medical condition of Aung San Suu Kyi. I shall inquire into that and write to the hon. Gentleman, and I shall try to find a way of making other hon. Members aware of the current situation, particularly in relation to her mental and physical health.
	I am proud that the UK has led, in many ways, the international response to this outrage. We have spoken to EU leaders and members of the UN Security Council. Burma's neighbours, including China, India, and Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries, are in no doubt that they have a critical role to play and need to use their influence—I reiterate that call in this debate. I wish to pay tribute to the tremendous work done by my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Bill Rammell), when he held this portfolio. He spoke up at the meeting of 45 Asian and EU Ministers in Hanoi only last month and he did not pull any punches. He said that the charges against Aung San Suu Kyi were baseless, he called for her to be released, along with the other 2,100 political prisoners who are detained in Burma—those are the ones we know of—and he asserted that without her and other opposition leaders the 2010 elections would simply not have any credibility in international eyes.
	In Hanoi and in Phnom Penh, my predecessor spoke directly to Burmese Ministers to urge them to take positive steps to restore democracy. As hon. Members will be aware, and as the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland mentioned, the UK is taking action within the European Union. The Prime Minister intends to raise the issue of Burma at the June European Council. On 19 May, the Foreign Secretary discussed further steps that the EU should take in Brussels, and our officials continue to work with EU member states on tighter measures that target the regime. The Government believe that further measures, including financial sanctions, will increase pressure on the regime.
	May I return to the comment that the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland made about Aung San Suu Kyi's health? We believe that she is not in bad health, but she has severely limited access to medical staff and we do not have any further information. She is, as ever, a remarkable woman—we would all accept that—and we believe that she is well enough to defend herself appropriately during the course of these proceedings, however unfair and unjust we know them to be. That is the best information we can offer at the moment, but I am certainly willing to provide any further information that I can get to him.
	May I return to the UK's contribution? We have ensured that Burma is discussed at the United Nations, including in the Security Council. The UK will be pushing for the firmest of responses, but it is only right on occasions such as this to be honest and frank about the boundaries of the effectiveness of our efforts. For example, hon. Members will be aware that our efforts to secure a Security Council resolution in 2007 following the saffron revolution were blocked, and the current composition of the Security Council means that any binding resolution against Burma is unlikely. Of course, the UK supports the imposition of a universal arms ban against Burma, but we know that an arms embargo requires a mandatory chapter 7 resolution.
	I am also aware that there are calls for Burma to be referred to the International Criminal Court. Appalling and unforgivable crimes are undoubtedly being committed in Burma as we speak, but that country is not party to the Rome statute, and again a Security Council resolution would be required. We believe that it is incredibly important that we focus on practical measures that will convince the regime to choose the path of reform and national reconciliation.
	What we have achieved so far is two unprecedented presidential statements, and we should regard that as positive. Two weeks ago, the Security Council expressed its concern about the arrest and called for political prisoners to be released and involved and engaged in the political process. As the hon. Gentleman said, we know that President Obama and the Secretary of State in the American Administration share our concern for Burma, and recently US sanctions against the regime were renewed.
	Although it is right that there be a focus on Aung San Suu Kyi, the hon. Gentleman rightly made the point that she is one of more than 2,100 political prisoners in Burma. People have been imprisoned for up to 65 years simply for asking for help for cyclone victims—an appalling state of affairs.
	Another crucial requirement for national reconciliation has to be the involvement of all ethnic groups in Burma. The UK has condemned the continuing human rights abuses that ethnic groups in Burma have suffered. Recently, we received worrying reports about the situation in Karen state, which the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) referred to. Thousands of people have been forced to flee to Thailand because of an offensive by the Burmese army, and tragically there have been a number of civilian casualties. Violence in Karen state can only prolong the suffering of the Karen people.
	The Rohingya people are abused in Burma, and abused as refugees throughout the region. We have drawn the attention of the international community, including the United Nations Human Rights Council, to the plight of minorities. The conflicts with the Karen community and others are regrettable consequences of the regime's attitude to the people of Burma. The full and equitable participation of Burma's ethnic groups in the political process has to be the key to a durable, sustainable solution to its problems.
	I refer to my previous responsibilities in saying that way in which we respond to the humanitarian crisis is equally important. We are the biggest donor of humanitarian aid to Burma. On top of our contribution to cyclone relief of £45 million, we intend to spend another £25 million on aid to the people of Burma this year.
	There is a worldwide public campaign calling for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. The Prime Minister and global leaders have added their weight to that of millions who have spoken out about the plight of Burma.